Team Board.

Meet the team board. We have a saying (or not really, but I say it). “You’re not just a name in a database, you’re a name on a big white board.” We started using this board for several reasons a few months ago and it’s proving successful. Why do we have the team board?

First, the team board lists all members of the team. It has names and pictures. “I don’t know who that is” isn’t an excuse anymore. Notice the red and blue dots, Beth fills in those on Sunday mornings for the team members that will be there either the morning (red) or evening (blue) or both (wish for purple, but we use red + blue).

There’s a spot for photos from recent events, announcements, and a place for people to request further training. With 70+ members, it’s hard to remember everything so this board captures the important info.

There’s a place for “notes,” members on hiatus who will be returning (so we won’t forget them), announcements, and other things crucial to our central hub.

And that’s it. The board is just outside of A-control, which is where the volunteers huddle. It gives me an easy way to communicate to them, and an easy place to capture information from them to improve what we do. And it helps to define the scale of team we’re working with. In the end, find ways to continually improve your team. Look for weak areas and fix them. For us, I was losing people. They were on a spreadsheet somewhere but with so many, they’d get missed. This keeps everything visual and insures no one is overlooked. We also found with rotating crews, it’s hard to keep unity and that feeling that “everyone knows everyone.” Now, that’s not the goal just for itself. But to run a successful production team, some charisma is needed. The team has to gel. And it helps to know names.

(note the picture of Naboo, sent to me by a great friend who was traveling Sevilla, Spain, and saw the movie location… cater to your team’s strengths).