STEAM Fall 2018: Think Big, Start Small, Do More.

In organization management, when we talk about progress, oftentimes we talk about how we can scale up. We ask ourselves questions like, How can we get more people invested in our message? What can we do to generate participation in this organization? What steps can we take to grow our company?

It’s taken for granted that more is better. So it’s exceedingly rare that we take a step back and ask ourselves the question, Will scaling up help us accomplish our goals?

This is not only a question that’s hard to answer. It’s also a question that’s hard to ask. It forces an organization to reevaluate its goals and mission statement, and to be brutally honest with itself in post-mortem discussions of its past efforts.

In Spring of 2018, STEAM scaled up without asking this question. We got rid of our longstanding discipline-focused subgroups and replaced them with one big general body. We opened up project funding to the entire Brown community. We started a 130 person Slack workspace. STEAM had more members than ever before.

It didn’t work. Here’s why.

More project proposals does not mean more completed projects.

We received a lot of proposals from an array of members of the Brown community. We accepted twelve. Only two are on track to be completed by the end of Fall 2018.

Why only two? It was very hard to reach out and get updates from most project leaders, who were often busy with other important responsibilities. When we did get updates, usually not much progress had been made. Most of the twelve projects were abandoned when schoolwork became too strenuous, or when the project groups lost interest.

It’s not their fault—it’s really, really hard to find time to work on a creative project and keep up with the demanding workload that comes with being a student at Brown. Only the most committed and motivated project leaders were able to deliver on their ambitions.

Perhaps another issue with this model was that project leads, who were in essence private contractors, had no personal accountability to STEAM. There was no mechanism to guarantee that they executed their proposals, and, as a result, most let their projects fall to the wayside without ever giving a status update.

More members does not mean more investment.

We had 130 people join our Slack workspace, but it was a rare occurrence that anyone other than internal team members ever posted or reacted to anything in the channels. Turnout for general body meetings declined over the course of the semester, and there were only a few “regulars” who attended more than one meeting. One of the issues the Spring 2018 restructure tried to tackle was keeping everyone informed about how they could involve themselves with STEAM, but even so, people often still asked us about how they could participate.

The fact of the matter was that there wasn’t enough stuff to be done for 130 people to all be consistently involved. Even the things that did have to be done were not delegated, and were handled by the co-presidents. If you weren’t involved in a specific project, you weren’t doing anything with STEAM.

The result of this? 90% of those 130 people didn’t have an opportunity to engage with STEAM on a regular basis, and the co-presidents were overworked and burnt out. What was supposed to be a community of people all interested in tearing down barriers between disciplines ended up being a collection of individuals, islands in themselves, all equally uninvested in STEAM.

So, to summarize,

• Only the project leads most committed to STEAM truly had the time to follow through on their ideas, and the lack of a mechanism for personal accountability let project leads easily default on their promises without informing the rest of the organization.
• The vast majority of club members were uninvested in STEAM because they weren’t given the opportunity to regularly engage with STEAM.

Armed with these observations, we set out to finally answer the scale-up question.

We laid out our goals, and we defined them in terms of a concept we’re calling (*) (“star”).

Put simply, (*) is that feeling of understanding you get when you see an echo of what you’re familiar with in something you’re completely unfamiliar with. This is the idea at the core of STEAM—that you deepen your understanding of two seemingly disparate concepts by recognizing how they are unified underneath the surface.

For us, the aim of Brown STEAM is to, discuss (*), expose people to (*), and experience (*) ourselves. We discuss (*) at round-table sessions and open Q&A’s. We expose people to (*) with experimental workshops and talks. We experience (*) through cool interdisciplinary projects.

With these three core purposes in mind, we drafted up a plan for how Brown STEAM should look.

Starting in Fall of 2018, Brown STEAM will be a core group of twelve to twenty people, also known as the “STEAM Team”. This group will work together to plan workshops and events, host discussions, and propose and execute projects. They’ll be admitted through application. Each of these individuals will also take responsibility over some more bureaucratic process in the club, i.e. budgeting, social media, etc.

General members of the Brown community will no longer be able to propose projects or organize talks and workshops. If you are interested in doing these things, you’ll need to apply to join the STEAM Team.

Anyone can participate in and attend workshops, talks, and discussions. When it comes to non-organizational or project-level things, we want STEAM to be completely inclusive.

So how do these changes resolve the issues we had before?

To find out, let’s unpack them one-by-one.

Joining STEAM Requires Filling Out an Application

Scaling down to a smaller group of individuals who have more license over the club’s direction means that we need to be more direct about determining who is a good fit for joining the team. This means, primarily, ensuring that whoever we take on will embrace our club’s culture and mindset, and will also contribute meaningful knowledge and skills to the team.

We like to see our on-boarding process less like an application and more like speed dating. It should be an opportunity for us to learn more about you, but also for you to learn more about us. Applying to join the STEAM Team means you’ll get the chance to seriously consider your interest in the club’s ideas, your availability for the semester, and whether or not you enjoy working with us before you join.

Hopefully, by the end of the application process, you’ll feel great about joining the team, and we’ll feel great about it too.

Everybody Takes Ownership Over an Organizational Process

In the past, two issues have often plagued those on STEAM’s internal team.

a) STEAM co-presidents have been so bogged down by bureaucratic tasks that they usually resign after one year.

b) STEAM Team members have felt underutilized and felt like they aren’t vital to the organization’s success.

Introducing effective task delegation solves both of these problems simultaneously. Co-presidents can balance STEAM responsibilities with the rest of their lives, and avoid end-of-term burnout. STEAM Team members can take ownership over STEAM, and know that they’re absolutely essential to the day to day function and the future success of the club.

Everyone on the team can feel good about channeling their passion for (*) into Brown STEAM, without feeling overworked or overburdened.

Project Proposals Can Only be Submitted by the STEAM Team

Restricting project proposal permissions to a core group of a dozen or so people who are both admitted by application and who take ownership over an area of the organization solves the “accountability for delivering on projects” problem. This is a stark difference from our approach last semester, but we feel it’s for the best.

Project leaders who are invested in both the everyday function and ultimate future of Brown STEAM will have a more realistic understanding of the personal commitment required to see projects through to end, and so will be more likely to follow through on concrete deliverables. At any given point in time, STEAM will be overseeing fewer projects than we were last semester, but more of those projects will make it to completion.

STEAM Will No Longer Have a General Body

Most clubs, at their core, are collectives meant to serve a niche group of individuals who are all very invested in one particular idea. STEAM is different. It’s as much about serving those who are very committed to the ideas behind STEAM as it is exposing STEAM to those who are unfamiliar with it.

That said, the fact of the matter is that while we did technically have 130 people in the organization last semester, only about 10 percent of those people frequently attended meetings, workshops, and discussions. It’s unfair to expect the 90 percent to be held accountable for concrete deliverables, and it’s equally unfair to neglect the 10 percent’s desire to consistently and actively engage with STEAM.

And that’s just it. Limiting the definition of in STEAM to the 10 percent of people who are really invested in what STEAM has to offer gives a very clear delineation between those who should have a personal responsibility to the organization and those who shouldn’t. Members of the STEAM Team can rely on each other to bring consistent commitment to the table, and those not on the STEAM Team can come and go as they please, without the obligation to do any more for the group than they want to.

Put another way, the old structure resisted consistent churn between meetings, workshops, and events. The new structure embraces it. After all, if we want to expose STEAM to as many people as possible, sustained churn, so long as it is coupled with positive turnout, is actually a good thing.

Where Do We Go From Here?

We know that we haven’t been what the Brown community needs us to be. As much as we talk about the importance of accountability, we ourselves have been unaccountable. We’ve changed the way we do things without serious meditation on why we’re making changes. And we’ve failed to deliver thought-provoking projects that expose the underlying interconnectedness of ideas, disciplines, and people.

Perhaps most importantly, we’ve also been dishonest—dishonest with ourselves about what Brown STEAM can, should, and will be. We got caught up in trying to make STEAM as open and accessible as possible, because we really believe that it’s something everyone should know about and experience. But in the process, we lost sight of our goals as an organization and as individuals.

In Fall of 2018 though, we’re going to set things straight. We’ve restructured the organization around a clearly defined purpose, with a solid line of reasoning for every decision.

We’re going to create cool projects, pioneer inspiring and experimental workshops, and delve into the core of what STEAM means to us, to you, and to the rest of the world.

And we want you to do it with us.

Comments or questions about STEAM? Email us at brown@steamwith.us and we’ll get back to you ASAP. To apply to join the STEAM Team, click here.