The Liquid Rocket Initiative has a problem: all of our subteam leads are seniors, while most of our members are freshmen. This means that when the seniors graduate, they risk taking with them the technical and organizational knowledge this group needs to deliver on its technical and philosophical objectives.
Turnover destroys student organizations. I once heard our academic advisor say, “all student organizations are transient.” We must act now to make the LRI an exception to this rule. For the Liquid Rocket Initiative to remain intact after the seniors graduate, several key features must be in place. We must establish clear objectives, create a high amount of intrinsic motivation to reach those objectives, and we must continue to equip ourselves with the mindset and tools necessary to turn our vision of building the best rocket engineering learning environment into reality.
One of the reasons that turnover is detrimental to so many student organizations is that the new leadership team oftentimes decides a new direction for the club that is not in line with the club’s past goals. This prevents the club from building momentum: rather than executing on its current plans, the club decides to start something new before its previous project is complete. Hence, it is necessary to achieve consensus between the current leadership team and the next generation about what the organization’s goals should be in the medium-to-long-term. Every single member of the organization must understand what the objectives and underlying philosophy of the team are.
Intrinsic motivation will make it much more likely that our group will succeed in the long term. When the seniors graduate, will we have the grit to pick up the pieces and keep moving forward? Or will the club disintegrate due to the lack of hierarchy? If each one of us is intrinsically motivated to finish this test stand, then our success won’t depend on the subteam leads. Each subteam lead must walk the fine line between supporting their people and not holding their hands through technical challenges. Members, on the other hand, need to assert themselves in meetings and operate as independently as possible from the oversight of their lead. If our motivation is “my subteam lead told me do it,” this is a bad sign. With enough understanding, communication, and motivation, the subteam leads’ limited time is no longer a bottleneck. While the subteam leads play a key role in motivating their team, it is equally important that each member in our group takes initiative for themself.
The Liquid Rocket Initiative can either be an organization where the higher-ups set the direction and then everyone else does the work, or it can be an organization where each member understands the group’s objectives and acts autonomously. The top-down model won’t work for us because everything will lose its structure as soon as the leads graduate. A group where each member can act independently, however, is preferable because then the leadership team is not a bottleneck. If each member sets the direction, that direction will continue to be set long after the initial leadership team is gone.
The last piece of this puzzle is to equip ourselves with the mindset and tools necessary to continue the Liquid Rocket Initiative’s mission after the seniors graduate. This includes the cultivation of highly refined technical and leadership skills, as well as the development of a healthy mindset towards risk, work, and relationships within the team. All of our members should adhere to the LRI ethic: confront ignorance, take risks, and execute. When people think of the LRI, they should associate us with two traits: confidence and competence. We move quickly in a way that excites us, rather than burning us out.
Furthermore, we must learn how to rapidly cultivate technical knowledge. This boils down to confidence: how do we react when you feel that someone is smarter or knows more than us? Do we avoid them and make excuses to preserve our collective ego? Or do we seek their company so that you can learn from them? Everyone in this group is strong enough to look in the mirror and confront their own ignorance. We do this by talking to industry professionals and people we can trust, getting feedback early and often. Frequent and honest feedback produces great engineers.
What will this club look like once each of our members gets feedback from several industry professionals on the work they are doing? Each one of us can and should cultivate a top-notch network of technical mentors. By immersing ourselves in a high-performing engineering environment, we will become a high performing product of that environment. Furthermore, if we outsource technical advice to external mentors, we will decouple our learning from the presence of the seniors.
The end-of-year transition will be simple if we approach it with confidence. Success is guaranteed if we challenge ourselves, move independently, and viciously question our thinking. If you are a member, look around you, find a problem, and act! Don’t wait for anyone’s permission. Through the independent actions of each member, we will turn the Liquid Rocket Initiative into a movement that has a lasting impact on the U of I community.
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