One of the myriad issues with STARFLEET elections is that all of the attention is usually spent on convincing the existing membership that a particular team is going to do a great job for the benefit of STARFLEET members. Here’s the problem with that.

Potential STARFLEET members do not vote in STARFLEET elections.

But we can learn a lot by looking at how Star Trek fans are choosing to express their fandom. The official Star Trek twitter account has 329,000 followers. 3.6 million people like the Star Trek page on Facebook. These people are out there. They’re not here. Star Trek is a great big property that’s been around for 50 years. It’s got some fans.

As of this writing, there are 4923 members in STARFLEET. That represents about 1.5% of the people on the Star Trek Twitter, and 0.13% of the Star Trek Facebook numbers. Even in the fandom category, STARFLEET is only half-as-large as the largest Star Trek fan club in the world.

One thing is pretty clear about those numbers: STARFLEET is not meeting the needs of Star Trek fans, or those numbers would be higher. Also, STARFLEET’s membership numbers haven’t really oscillated that much out of that range in the past decade or more, which raises the question of STARFLEET meeting the needs of STARFLEET members.

Even with a tremendous amount of marketing cash spent on launching Star Trek movies and TV shows, STARFLEET hasn’t been able to reap the benefits of those efforts. There’s a new series on the way, and the last three movies have made close to a billion dollars (if not more).

But I can already hear the age-old complaint — The Star Trek Facebook Page is free, so is the Star Trek Twitter account! So are other Star Trek fan clubs! We’re different because we charge money. According to Trek author Greg Cox, a decent rule-of-thumb for tie-in novels is that you can expect to sell books to about 1-2% of the viewing audience. A STARFLEET membership costs about as much as a new Star Trek novel, and they’ve sold millions of those books. It’s not about the membership dues.

In other words, something is wrong. If we want STARFLEET to be relevant again, we need to make some real changes.

“Group projects make me understand why Batman prefers to work alone.”

Welcome to STARFLEET, The World’s Largest Star Trek Fan Club! Except that it isn’t, and it probably won’t be for a long time. While it’s bad enough that we’re saying it even though it isn’t true, it causes a larger problem.

Specifically, it makes people think that anything related to STARFLEET is a larger problem. A problem that requires a lot of man-hours to solve. Something that requires a team. Or even worse, a department. This is only one half of the problem, we’ll cover the other half in a few paragraphs.

At Amazon.com, teams are limited in size. Not by specific number, but by pizza. You’re trying to solve a problem, so you create a team to solve it. If you can’t feed the team with two pizzas, that team is too large and you have to break it up. At a company with over 370,000 employees.

It turns out that there’s a lot of science to back up how and why that works. It forces a hard limit against scaling problems. It creates an environment where communication isn’t just happening, but where communication is effective. Larger teams mean more stress for the people on them, too.

It’s not just Amazon that’s doing this. Even the largest banks in the country are dividing teams into smaller and smaller pieces not just for productivity and communication, but for the transparency that smaller teams provide. It’s a definite benefit in a highly-regulated environment, but the same benefit is useful to small non-profits, too.

We’ve already seen this play out in practice, even within STARFLEET. Chapter operations are nimble. ECAB meetings are glacial.

The other half of the problem is that in trying to solve problems, you’re giving people the idea that the organization is so huge, so massive, so international that there’s a very deep pool of talent from which to pull. There isn’t. So we see help requests like this:

Role Specifications

* To lead a team of artists (5-20 members depending on availability)
in Fleet-wide projects such as WeekOfDiscovery and the TNG Anniversary.
* Help in the production of visual art materials (such as videos,
posters, business cards, banners etc).
* Help in the development of the Fleet’s overall marketing approach,
and to help in the development of new methods of reaching a wider audience.
* To act as a project lead for Fleet-wide artistic efforts.
* To build a team of artists/content creators, organize materials,
assist in the development of team members, and review art materials for
legality.

Education/Person specifications

The person filling this role should have experience in one of the following
fields:

* Digital art/poster design
* 3D artistry
* Traditional Media/Art design
* Video/Podcast production, or videography experience
* Web Design (visual) or online media design
* Corporate marketing material design

The person should be in good standing within the Fleet, with a knowledge of
International Copyright law, and have some experience managing projects with
a small team (although this will not stop applications being accepted).

This role is open to any member of the Fleet who has been a member for more
than 6 months, regardless of chapter or region.

We don’t have 5-20 strong visual artists available right now (nor have we since the 90s), but the person leading this mythical team needs to have business-class experience in management and leadership and a working knowledge of international copyright law?

And what are the odds that these 5-20 people are all going to be using the same development platform? Pretty low. They can’t be. The differences in skill set between making a great poster and making a great video are tremendous. The tools you use to create those things are different for each job. It’s not like expecting a motorcycle mechanic to have metric wrenches and standard wrenches. It’s like expecting a motorcycle mechanic to have metric wrenches and also be a Korean pop sensation.

So, let’s pull focus for just a second here. We’re smaller than we think. We need to think smaller. Much, much smaller.

Let’s say that you’re in leadership. A STARFLEET member comes to you with an idea that would be of interest to STAR TREK fans, and of interest to STARFLEET members. Your first question should be this: What Can You Do Today?

If they want to build a team? Say no. If they want to start a department? Say no. Ask them what they — the individual member — can do today. Define the problem that they’re trying to solve (or the service that they intend to provide), and ask them about the first step. What can they do today? Where will they be in two weeks? Can they finish in thirty days? Can they do this by themselves? If they can, you’re way ahead of the game.

Because if their idea works, you’ve used their time wisely. If their idea doesn’t work, you should shut it down and thank them very much for their time. If they can’t get to work on something today, it’s probably not worth considering right now, and you should investigate further when we’re a little closer to where we should be in terms of developing the talent pool.

What can you do today?