Quote:
Originally Posted by MrForbes
That's true. But I think it is not nearly the whole story.
I've spent some time reading and watching mentors on elite teams describing their process, and their analyses of various things about games and robots, and I don't really learn much new. What I haven't seen from them, is a frank discussion about how to motivate a team. I don't even know if it's possible, because I think some people are just natural leaders, and they don't really know how they do it.
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(sorry in advance for the essay)
Karthik agreed with you and called it "magic." Knufire said the same thing about 469. I disagree. I don't think it's called "magic." I think it's called "pressure."
I believe that FRC teams go through three stages on their road to powerhouse status:
1) A well-organized team structure and mentor base. This is the greatest benefit a mentor can give to a team in terms of seeing on-field results. 2056 and 3710 (and I'm sure many others) have mentors who do not touch the robot or fundraising package at all. Their job is to organize, fill out paperwork, keep everyone in the loop.
You need organization to actually develop from year to year. You can have passionate students (step two), but without the organization, your on-field results will be flashes in the pan, as opposed to a veritable gold rush.
2) Passionate students and excellent mentors. You can have really, really technically gifted mentors, but if you only have 3 students, and those students see the team more as after-school hangouts than a robotics team, then you're not going to have a competitive robot.
These students, when given the right resources (in FRC, these are mentors) grow. And they love FIRST. Adore it. Imagine a team of 10 Andrew Lawrences (you might not like his post in this thread, but the guy is so crazy about FIRST it blows my mind). This was actually a reality for the early days of 2056. The core group was so passionate about FIRST that they didn't just breathe it, they lived it. And we were lucky enough to have great mentors to fan the flames.
You don't have to work to motivate these students, because they'll actually be begging you to work longer hours, to open the shop early, to work on new drive trains.
This is where success first starts to happen. Your team might win a regional, or a chairman's award, or make consistent finals appearances. But eventually, your core of passionate students graduates and moves on. Which is where stage 3 comes in...
3) Pressure. 2056 has won 19 straight regional victories. Do you have any idea how much pressure the current team is under? There is a looming cloud that says "we can't be the group that broke the streak." But it's not a bad cloud - it's a motivator.
Many of the powerhouse teams do well because they are expected to. It's hard for newcomers to "get" the team until their first competition, but they usually get it shortly thereafter. Seeing exactly how your team is regarded is one motivator. Actually winning is a huge one - it's a great feeling, and you want to capture it.
So as a second-year student, you know the stakes. You know that the community sees you as a winner. And you will do anything,
anything, to keep that mantle. This pushes students who are already passionate, or even just semi-passionate, to being uber-passionate. Powerhouse teams have students that buy into the team's culture of success. No need to externally motivate when the motivation to build on and surpass previous accomplishments is ingrained into every student by their own observations.
CASE STUDY: A great example is 1717. What's going on on D'Penguineers? All of their students have no prior FRC experience - the team is only made up of grade 12s. But they are consistently one of the best teams in FRC.
Well, they're well
organized: they have a great education system that starts well before the students are on the team with VEX. They had a group of
passionate team members who developed what is probably FIRST's best swerve drive. And now their current team has access to these previously developed systems, and they are
pressured into using them to the best of their abilities (because they only get one shot at this, remember?). Boom, powerhouse team.
The tricky thing about continued success is that it's really, really hard. If you lose any of those three stages, your team's on-field performance will suffer. Your group of students can feel pressured, but if they aren't passionate, the pressure will break them. If your team loses its organization, it's harder to reallocate resources and succeed.
When you are part of these teams, you don't really feel the pressure. You feel a drive, and a passion, but you don't really know where it comes from. That's why Karthik and Las Guerillas couldn't put their fingers on it. I only realized it after I joined another team and bought into 3710's culture, and then talked to my siblings who were still on 2056.
But there is an element of Magic to these teams as well. Legendary mentor / drive coach John VNeun once described what it takes to win Championships: it's all about preparation and practice, refinement and iteration, so that if and when you hit that streak of luck, you are able to run with it as far as possible. Sometimes, if you're lucky enough, you get that perfect alliance, and the right opponents are eliminated, and your strategies work, and you win. That is a magic I hope to experience every time I go to competition.