Dave's Spontaneous Tips

Here you will find spontaneous (spon) tips I have collected or developed over my many years of coaching, training and running spontaneous problems. Some of these tips are advanced but with good coaching and practice a spon Jedi you can be. I hope you find them useful and if you have suggestions for other tips please email me.

Tip 1: Let the team make mistakes – once a mistake is made, and realized by the team on their own, it is less likely to be made in the future
Tip 2: Create spontaneous problems to help solve parts of the team’s long term problem – Spon is all about brainstorming and collecting ideas quickly to solve a problem, why not the long term problem. Use caution not to create spontaneous problems or coach in a way that leads to outside assistance on the long term problem.
Tip 3: Practice, Practice, Practice – Practice makes perfect
Tip 4A: Assign jobs – Each team member has strengths. Identify these strengths and assign that team member to exploit that strength. Examples of jobs – Time keepers, problem copy reviewer, builders, scoring analyzer, inventory master and a leader that queries team members that are usually quiet.
Tip 4B: Rotate jobs – Sometimes a team member will have a hidden strength that needs to be realized. As a coach/team member your job is to find these strengths within team members.
Tip 5: All team members are strongly encouraged to participate in solving the spontaneous problems. But the coach/team may decide that only certain team members will participate. If this is the case, the team should know who will do each type of problem before they get to competition.
Tip 6: Some problems will require that teams can’t talk to each other during the problem (most verbal are like this). The team can ask questions, usually at any point except while problem is being read. Asking judges questions is an indirect way to communicate between team members.
Tip 6A: During verbal and verbal hands-on problems, coach team members to communicate with each other by giving a response that sends a message to the team. Example: Use the word blue in a sentence. Response: My team should know that blue is more than a color. This is another way to communicate between team members if instructed that team members were not to communicate.
Tip 6B: During verbal and verbal hands-on problems, coach teams to communicate with signals. This assumes a problem rule stated team members were instructed to not TALK to each other versus COMMUNICATE or SIGNAL with each other. Teams may want to ask if this is OK as it may be interrupted differently by judges.
Tip 7: Have team members play the role of spontaneous judge.
Tip 8: Build the team dynamics by doing fun, team related activities that are not Odyssey related.
Tip 9: There is no outside assistance when coaching spontaneous!
Tip 10: During verbal response have the team look around the room for items, words or triggers that may help them respond.
Tip 11: Have each team member remember 5 words for each finger on a hand. Strange words. Have them try to work these words into their response if they get a verbal type problem. It will help the team move along and possible generate a creative response.
Tip 12: Acting out your verbal or verbal-hands on responses will energize the judges, make it more fun for the team. If not told to sit during response, coach them to stand and work their response into an action, this may nudge judges to a creative response even if not part of the scoring criteria.
Tip 13: If it doesn’t say not to, you may be able to. Coach the team to do the extreme. Coach them to ask also. Example: “Can I stand on the table? It does not say I can’t.”
Tip 14: Don’t discount any response. Stay positive as you coach. Pass this to your team members also.
Tip 15A: Coach team to ask lots of questions, if needed, but make sure the time keeper works to keep team on schedule.
Tip 15B: Challenge judges with questions but don’t argue with them. It takes time from the solution and may deflate the energy you are trying to create.
Tip 16: Coach team to be positive at all times. It can cost them team work points (if assigned) and even deflate the judges during scoring.
Tip 17: An important job to assign is the score analyzer. It should be the team member that is crafty – the one that can find loop holes and tricks to maximizing the team’s score. Most spontaneous problems have these types of loop holes/tricks built in, and sometimes the author of the problems didn’t expect the solutions that teams invent. A reminder, have all team members practice this. Sometimes as a coach you won’t realize that that reserved team member is a master at analyzing the problem.
Tip 18: At the beginning of the hands-on problem, teams should inventory all items and understand what is available before jumping in to solve.
Tip 19A: I used to tell my team that NASA engineers would plan for 9 seconds and implement for 1. A bit extreme but it got the point across. The team should brainstorm, agree on the best approach, implement and adjust as challenges arise. Don’t jump right to the solution. Sometimes the team may need to return to brainstorming during implementation. This is expected but should be managed by the time keeper, and the person responsible for the team copy.
Tip 19B: Here is a real life hands-on spontaneous example that saved lives – Have your team watch this video. Notice that something goes wrong with the implementation (pipe falls off). Coach the team to deal with issues like this.
Tip 20: Coach teams to avoid references that judges may not understand. This will be the difference between a creative and common response (4 points).
Tip 21: Prepare teams to deal with different verbal response methods, example picking cards from a deck, placing tokens into a can, rolling a die, random order etc…
Tip 22: The same team, repeating a creative answer usually gets scored as a common response, but the same creative answer given by two different teams will both be scored as creative.
Tip 23: I have seen a verbal problem where teams can write down their answers and select higher point cards for answers they think are creative. Coach and practice is the only way to be ready different problems. Reference this Spon example to practice something different.
Tip 24: When responding to verbal problems coach teams to spread out the response cards when time begins. All too often I have seen two cards end up in the can for one answer. This can cause confusion and time. It also allows the team to see their progress and assists the time manager in determining how much time is left vs responses to be given.
Tip 25: Before responding to verbal problems have teams verify that they have the proper number of cards. Teams should interrupt Judges before time begins to correct the problem. Judges are instructed to double check but mistakes happen.
Tip 26: Practice a spontaneous problem at every meeting! Recruit a spontaneous coach.
Tip 27: Setting up spon problems takes a lot of time. There are quicker ways to practice spon problems. Just ask team quick questions like, “Name thing that go up” or hand them an item(s) from the house and have them improvise. No time limit, no rules. This technique gets the same creative thinking process churning that is needed for a spontaneous problem.
Tip 28: No timing devices, watches, electronic devices are permitted in the Spon competition room. Coaching good time management is vital to success.
Tip 29: Comment on Comment exercise. Sit your team in a circle. Have one team member make a comment (anything, or give them a subject or topic). Have the next team member improve that comment into something more creative. Restart with every other team member.
Tip 30: Spontaneous problems have transformed over the years and they continue to transform. The team should be coached to listen to the rules that are read and ask for clarification if they don’t understand. The problems are not always cookie cutter, they are spontaneous and require the team to be ready for anything. Let me share a few examples of what has changed over the years.
1. Past verbal or verbal hands-on problems asked teams to respond in order. Now problems allow teams to respond in any order, without an equal number of responses from each team member.
2. In verbal or verbal hands-on problems, when responding, teams can no longer be stuck if a team member can’t answer.
3. All 3 types of problems now strongly encourage the entire team to participate. In the past it was only 5 team members and 2 would sit out (assuming teams had full 7 members).
4. Teams are no longer given 1 minute to select which team members will solve the spontaneous problem.
Tip 31: Spontaneous problems can be vague at times (similar to long term problems). For good reason. Teams need to be ready to fill in these gaps with their creative approach / solution.
Tip 32: I encourage coaches and teams to read the program guide. This booklet will trump any of my tips as spontaneous rules, process, etc transform year to year. It has to otherwise its not spontaneous!