Team Organization in the BSA



Through my teenage years I gained most of my knowledge of teams from my Boy Scout troop, where I had been involved in every level of the organization. To break down the basic workings of troop activities, the general flow is something like this: scouts in the eighth grade or younger comprise most of the members of the troop and are grouped into patrols of same-aged scouts that range in size from six to fifteen, give or take, depending on the amount of same aged kids. Upon entering high school, the scouts that still remained in the troop (most tend to drop out shortly into high school, as other time commitments pop up) were given a green shirt (instead of the usual tan), the patrol was disbanded outside of formal organizational purposes, and scouts were assigned a younger patrol to work with. Among these “senior” scouts, one was elected to be the Junior Assistant Scoutmaster (or JASM), whose job it was to run meetings, coordinate the other senior scouts, and report back up to the adult leader of the troop, the Scoutmaster.

               This, as a system, has been in practice in my troop for at least fifteen years, and is an example of a simple hierarchy. The Scoutmaster is too busy to attend to the individual needs of eighty registered scouts, and leans on the JASM to collect and condense the requisite information for him. The JASM has to balance time spent “downwards” working with the patrols and other senior scouts, often filling in as a stopgap when people need extra help, with time spent “upwards” seeking out and performing direct tasks from the Scoutmaster. The position rotates bi-annually, which is both a blessing and a curse, as poor JASMs (of which there are many) can get replaced before they do any real harm to the organization, but good JASMs are often rotated out too soon, with their absence dearly noted. This system of turnover also keeps the various senior scouts from grappling for power, as it’s likely if they stick around they can get the position at a later point, and it means that the knowledge of group leadership is diffuse, avoiding a key man scenario. I myself was JASM in the spring of my sophomore year of high school, but was regularly called upon afterwards to head meetings when the current JASM was not in attendance. The senior scout system is not perfect—there’s certainly a non-zero amount of free-riding from those assigned to the patrols—but the system has worked efficiently for a long time, and is certainly a useful learning experience that I personally benefitted a great deal from. 

 It’s worth noting that the adults in the organization operate with a different system, where all the Assistant Scoutmasters (ASM) report directly to the Scoutmaster in a one-boss scenario that is often prone to some political machinations. Since the ASMs are comprised of the fathers of the boys in individual patrols, working with those same patrols, there’s often a bit of a selfish clamor for resources, with each ASM wanting his son’s patrol to receive the most special attention. It’s somewhat odd that the group of grown men will often function less efficiently than the teenagers, but I think this boils down to an issue of opportunism, where the senior scouts really have nothing to gain by opportunistic behavior (and most of the opportunistic people have already self-selected out of the troop), and thus work together fairly cohesively, whereas the adults have a more opportunistic desire to see their own sons advance in the system. 

               Using some of the lessons of Katzenbach and Smith’s studies on teams, the senior scout system’s success becomes clearer. As noted earlier, knowledge is diffuse, with expertise spread amongst many members of the team. Structure is given from on high (the Scoutmaster), but the implementation is left to the scouts themselves, creating a system of trust which further expands the knowledge base of everyone involved. The team is small, and filled with only the most dedicated scouts, demonstrating a willingness to work hard and work together as a team. What it lacks are specific, targeted goals, instead focusing more on the implicit goal of making meetings run smoothly and the advancement of the younger scouts placed in their charge.

Comments

  1. It was interesting to learn about the organizational structure of the Boy Scouts, a group which I have no experience with. As a JASM, you certainly had more recent knowledge of your troops relational structure between each of its members, and it sounds like you had more direct contact with them as well. It's likely that the troop viewed you as a friend or role model, while the Scoutmaster might have been seen as a more authoritative figure. Did you ever experience tension with the Scoutmaster concerning differing opinions over how troop functions should be conducted? How those sorts of issues were handled would be revealing of the deeper power structure at play, and perhaps be a key determinant to which of B&D's organizational models your experience fits into.

    I related to your mention of opportunism with the ASMs. On every sports team I have ever been a part of, the "highly involved" parents (i.e. the one's at every practice, every game, always willing to help the coach's, etc,.) are usually the same group that are just waiting for the right opportunity to propel their child to the top of the roster. They do all the extras with the hopes of gaining favor with the coaches, and because it places them closer to the action so they won't miss their opportunity. I imagine it would be hard to find a children's organization that didn't involve this, to some extent. I would be curious to study what methods might be used to thwart those behaviors, because it seems unlikely that coaches could ever be completely impartial to their players as long as those types of parents are influencing them.

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  2. You dove right into the structure of your scouting group without mentioning function/activities of the group and why members participate (before they get too involved with other things in high school). I have some vague notions of scouting because somebody I know from work and whom I stay in touch with in Facebook is a Scoutmaster and does have a son in scouting. From this I gather it is quite active during the summer, where there is camping and other nature activities. But I really don't have a sense of what goes on the rest of the year. I have some vague recollection from my childhood about merit badges and doing good deeds. But that seems very old fashioned. So you might have given some background on scouting itself, before you got into the structure.

    It would also be good to know whether there is any training for the various roles of responsibility. That parents might act selfishly on behalf of their own kids seems a theme that gets a fair amount of press - little league, youth soccer, what have you. The issues has some predictable elements so one wonders if some training might be able to counter it some.

    I was never in boy scouts but I subsequently was a counselor at a sleep away camp, which I did after my first year in college. I arrived a bit late so I don't know if there was any training, but I didn't get any. One night in my group I had the responsibility of patrol of the group after lights out. One bunk was very noisy so I went inside to see what was going on. If I recall correctly, one kid was pretty mouthy. I made him get out of bed and do push ups. That worked to get the bunk to quiet down. The next day I told the head counselor of the group this story and he said we don't do that sort of thing. So I screwed up, even though it seemed appropriate to me at the time. Given that experience, I wonder about whether there is training for the scout leaders, particularly the parents. I gather for the JASMs, they have been in the boy scouts for quite a while, and the socialization from the experience might be a good substitute for formal training.

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