Good teams and less, what makes the difference?

[Korngut]

I recently had a discussion about this with a friend of mine. I wanted to hear more opinions on this matter, and maybe someone who could explain to me why this is happening:)

The gaps between teams within the FRC are huge. There are top teams that have managed to maintain their status for years, and there are teams that every year fight for promotion to the district championship.

The more interesting part, is that teams manage to maintain their status. Almost every year there are one or two teams that repeat themselves and are very well known for winning the Einstein. Einstein in a general way consists of very recurring teams, and even in Israel, the district I come from, the teams that go international every year are very repetitive.
This indicates that the difference is very wide and consists of something that repeats itself in the best teams over the years, and conversely also in the less strong teams.

I have seen teams that did build up and became top teams, and the level did not drop afterwards, some of these teams started from very bad situations.

What makes the difference?
money?
Mentors?
Quality of team members?
General conduct?

How do you create it? What is the recipe for making quality teams?

[Katie_UPS]

Related thread:

What does it take to go to Einstein

What does it take for a team to get their robot onto the Einstein field? 2491 Is a team that likes to dream, and dream big. This year is the first year we are really shooting for Einstein. The idea is not so much that we “expect” to get there, but more so that we will do everything that we can in the pursuit of competitive greatness. Einstein is just a good name to put on it, and a good high place to shoot for. This is a situation of “we dont know what we dont know”. Its easy to say, but we re…

[Mr.MetalSmith]

TLDR to previous thread;

• Luck plays a large role.
• Your systems and approach (All ties into culture) allow you to capitalize on the luck and opportunities you’re given.
• Solid, dedicated, knowledgeable mentor base
• Ties into mentors, but strong student leaders and training

But great thread, if you have the time go dig through it. Lots of excellent advise from some truly amazing people in the community

[BrianAtlanta]

That depends on the goal of your program. There are lots of ways you can run a team to meet their goal for the program. In the end, the program is there to benefit the students of that community. FYI, the goal of the program is generally never ‘to win worlds’. That is result of programs with a goal that focused on promoting engineering. But for other communities, it might be ‘keep students engaged so they don’t drop out of school’ or ‘help them see a future that isn’t a minimum wage job’. And there’s a continuum between those two ends of the goal range.

I’ve visited with a program that is tries to address generational poverty, helping the students see a path to a non-degreed career and not a min wage job. To me, the impact of that program is HUGE beyond compare and the program I hold as the best example of what FIRST is.

From a team focusing on engineering, it often comes down to mentors. the mentors have to be in sync on how the team runs. The mentors need to train the students on the skills, and then train the students on how to ‘train other students’. The mentors set the program culture that the student emulate. The students need to view the mentors as partners in the process, offering up valuable past experiences.

Oh…and after all that, it’s Money and having enough students. But the key driver is the program’s goal and community they’re severing. In the end, the result of the program isn’t the robot, but the student. And every way you can operate a team is a valid way to operate, one isn’t better than the other. All FIRST wants is for the program to impact the students for the better.

I say this because sometimes teams that operate differently than how they operate are viewed as not doing it “the right way”.

[Tom_Line]

Every long-term highly successul team has one thing in common, a handful of very talented mentors who work their butts off. They are the only true continuity year over year as team members move through and graduate.

Just having that ‘dream team’ can keep even a low funded team competing at the highest level.

There are definitely teams that get extraordinary student members and have great success for a couple years, but those members eventually move on and without the continuity that a really good mentor team brings, the team’s fortunes will follow the membership skillset, wax and wane.

FIRST needs to do a better job of educating members in the transition between FTC and FRC for exactly that reason. The “expected” lower-level of mentor involvement in FTC and FLL teams are in direct opposition to what makes a longer-term successful team in FRC and the transition can be very jarring and confusing to team members.

TLDR: Great leaders and continuity.

[Korngut]

@Mr.MetalSmith

• Luck plays a large role.

I went through the thread there. I saw some interesting insights there, but regarding the insight of luck, there is no doubt that you need luck to go far in the competition, but you don’t really need a lot of luck to be a good team.
Even if 254, 1323, 4414, 2910, and quite a few other teams do not reach Einstein, there is still no doubt that they will remain very strong teams and have this name.
I believe that good teams will stay good, regardless of luck.
In this context, the relationship between the level of the team and its achievements in the competition decreases.

[Korngut]

@BrianAtlanta

I say this because sometimes teams that operate differently than how they operate are viewed as not doing it “the right way”.

FIRST has changed my life and that of many other team members with me on the team.
There is no doubt that if you reach high achievements with 0 contribution to the team members, the team is not worth much, but in my opinion, in order to take the team to the transition, you have to achieve achievements.

In addition, in my opinion, when a team functions well, the team members will be able to get more from it.

[Ben_Martin]

These are the common threads I’ve seen on consistently-winning teams:

• There are usually at least 2 people who understand FRC and are very committed to showing up consistently, with at least one of them being very good strategically
• Somebody on the team is good at robot software

Besides that, it varies widely based on local resources. There are a few edge cases where the above wasn’t true, but those are rare.

[Akash_Rastogi]

If I could boil it down to one thing:

1. Every member and mentor of the team agreeing on a common goal(s), agreeing to want to achieve those goals, and agreeing to the level of time and effort required to achieve the goal(s).

I’ve been on plenty of teams where goals for the team and season were not communicated or shared commonly, and as such the actions people took while on the team would reflect the disjointed set of goals everyone had.

[Skyehawk]

import AdamHeard

<\s>

[cbale2000]

@Korngut

What makes the difference?
Money?
Mentors?
Quality of team members?
General conduct?

How do you create it? What is the recipe for making quality teams?

All of the above.

These four items are all intrinsically connected and interdependent on each other.

Money can solve a lot of problems, but without quality mentors/team members to spend it wisely, it’s meaningless. Likewise, if you have a bunch of good mentors but no money, there’s a limit to what can be done, or without a good group of students, the robot won’t perform (only 1 of the 4 drive team roles can be an adult after all). And even if you have money, lots of mentors, and quality students, if the conduct of the team is poor, the entire thing can fall apart.

In my experience, at a fundamental level it seems to usually come down to one person (or, in some cases, a handful of people), usually a lead mentor, who is able to surround themselves with solid group of mentors, recruit a good group of students, and enable that group to do their best. This mentor does not necessarily have to be a technical person themselves as, ultimately, this is a communications role. The person needs to have a true passion for FIRST, AND be effective at sharing that passion with others (especially those unfamiliar with the program), in order to get them involved in one way or another (whether as mentors, students, sponsors, or a number of other ways).

Take a look at the consistently successful teams and you can almost always point to a particular person who’s been a constant presence in their success over the years. In some cases, you can also see what happens when that person leaves the team how significant their impact was as the teams performance changes (I can think of several examples I’ve seen, but don’t want to name any names). There are, of course, alternative paths to success besides relying on one person, I’ve also seen teams put systems/procedures in place (whether by “committee” or left behind by a previous leader) that allow teams to be successful independent of a key mentor, though these generally seem harder to implement and carry forward.

My suggestion to someone trying to create a consistently successful team? Find that Leader and get them involved, or find someone who can become that leader, or become that leader yourself (but at the same time, be honest with yourself and open to the possibility that you might not be the best person for the job). It’s a bit of a vague answer, but if people had completely figured this out, then everyone would do it.

[Korngut]

It seems to me that you are saying that the point is mainly the team members, but how do you make quality team members?

[Korngut]

@cbale2000

In my experience, at a fundamental level it seems to usually come down to one person

I think it is much more than that, and there is a limit to what a leader can do.
In my opinion, even a good leader cannot stimulate and make an entire team active, especially if it is a large team and it is difficult to reach everyone, and many times everyone is needed.

[cbale2000]

I don’t mean to suggest a leader can do everything by themselves, but part of being an effective leader is finding others who can fill the roles the leader themselves is unable to. In some cases I suppose a team could just get lucky and end up with people who join on their own accord and come together to create an effective team, but I have to think this is more rare and probably less sustainable long-term without that key figure to hold things together.

[Oblarg]

Dedication, knowledge, and money. In that order. You do need all three.

It is typically hard to get enough of these without mentors, but the mentors are means to an end, not the end itself. Winning teams do still vary a lot in the amount and nature of their mentor involvement.

[waialua359]

@Oblarg

Dedication, knowledge, and money. In that order. You do need all three.

Depends on your geographic location. Money first is an understatement if you’re in Hawaii and trying to do FRC. I assume the same for many international teams.

[Oblarg]

For sure, local circumstances can change the ordering. I think I gave a good representation of the “typical” ordering, though.

[David_IsMe]

@Oblarg

Dedication, knowledge, and money. In that order. You do need all three.

@Akash_Rastogi

Every member and mentor of the team agreeing on a common goal(s), agreeing to want to achieve those goals, and agreeing to the level of time and effort required to achieve the goal(s).

Both of these were how my team was able to get ourselves from a 30/30 team at both district events having robots that could not move to going to DCMP twice in a row being an alliance captain at one of them…

Dedication from all parties both students and mentors is very important our team used to comprise of almost all band kids so if there was a band event no FRC, now we have a healthy mix of students in different programs making it easier to engage all year round. Dedication from the mentors was a 1000% game changer we went from having 4-5 mentors to now having nearly 30 mentors around 20 of which come to almost all meetings making it easier to manage student engagement as well as easier to not feel burnout from our top preformers.

Knowledge. We used to not keep any records of how/what/why we did things now we write down everything everytime. Take videos of everything, pictures of everything all the time, we would now rather have terabytes of data both good and bad than not have it at all.

Money! We learned that having dedicated mentors and a great knowledge base it makes getting money easier. Ill be open and state that 2022 season and prior our team never spent over 20k total on 2 events and registration, robot, travel, everything… We now 100k a year and climbing between both FRC teams and money isn’t always the solution but it sure makes it easier…

Lastly agreeing on a common goal is critical if we are all working on the team for the goal to win Impact its easier to funnel our resources and the same for just having fun!

[ElectraLucky5413]

@Tom_Line

FIRST needs to do a better job of educating members in the transition between FTC and FRC for exactly that reason. The “expected” lower-level of mentor involvement in FTC and FLL teams are in direct opposition to what makes a longer-term successful team in FRC and the transition can be very jarring and confusing to team members.

All of this.

I heard this from another mentor in our region: Students should build the house, but mentors need to ensure a steady foundation and knowledgeable crew. This held true in our team, if our 8 mentors did not step up and pull the program out of the gutter in 2022 when we went from over 100 students across FLL/FTC/FRC to 7 students total, plus a build space loss, we wouldn’t be here.

Every link in the chain is needed to keep it together.

Now those same mentors continue to support the program, and we are back up to around 40 students across FLL/FRC. Still rebuilding, but luckier than some teams that unfortunately collapsed back then.

[JoeLemonade]

good mentors, good effort, building and designing within your limits, and a lot of luck