CWA Blog Archive-(Route)Setting Good Standards Expectations & Communication

(Route)Setting Good Standards Expectations & Communication

Pdf Summary

This article tackles setting and communicating expectations for routesetting teams, acknowledging that in a robot world the job would be simple, clock in, strip walls, reset walls, open for the public, but in reality there's an incredible amount of planning, maintenance, and human feeling involved. As a previous article discussed, a quarterly or bi-annual check-in meeting is a great venue to re-evaluate team expectations and how well they're communicated and met, but if that's not possible, operators have other options, including writing out policies and procedures, experimenting with communication styles, and opening the feedback loop. The article focuses first on written documents. A great initial step is having one home binder where all important documents live. The author used their COVID shutdown work-from-home time to write their gym's routesetting manual, including maintenance logs, trajectory paths for newer setters, professional development opportunities, gear logs, and an expectation check-off sheet. This gave the team a starting point for what to review upon returning to the gym and gave the author a standard process for onboarding new hires. The throughline is that clearly setting and communicating expectations is essential to a well-functioning routesetting team, and that written documentation is a foundational tool for achieving it. For head setters, the piece argues that investing in written policies and procedures, alongside experimenting with communication styles and opening feedback loops, transforms vague or assumed expectations into explicit, consistently communicated standards, making the team more aligned, better onboarded, and more effective.

Asset Caption

This piece tackles setting and communicating routesetting expectations, noting the job involves far more than a simple routine. It champions written documentation, a centralized manual with maintenance logs, trajectory paths, gear logs, and expectation checklists, which the author wrote during COVID shutdown. Written documents create clarity, standardize onboarding, and give setters and leaders a shared reference.