Apple is awesome. I own almost their entire suite of products, and odds are that you do too. They just recently eclipsed ExxonMobil as the most valuable business in the entire world. Now, clearly, there are a lot of reasons for their success, but today I'll focus on one - the notion of the Directly Responsible Individual (DRI.)
Steve Jobs made a point of ensuring that there were no "committees" at Apple. Groups were never responsible for any decisions. The organization may have been enormous, with hundreds of different projects going on, but there was always one single person responsible for any given project or sub-project. The Directly Responsible Individual.
The DRI had complete say about what would happen on a project, and what the people under him or her had to do - but if they failed to deliver, they would cease to be the DRI. It seems failure was fairly rare. When the options were deliver or be fired, individuals delivered, because there was no one else on your committee to hide behind.
How does this relate to debate, you might ask. Simple. While Apple is a giant corporation and debate partnerships have…two people, the notion of having a DRIs for each debate partnership is equally important.
The question of who should be responsible for what is a tricky one, but I believe that it comes down to this: Which speaker actually wins the debate? On the negative, the debate is almost never over after the LOC. It's just the opening - arguments are shelled out, but not developed, and it's rare for case responses to be totalizing. The MOC is normally where the debate is won or lost, with the LOR having some ability disrupt the PMR and pre-empt potential affirmative visions, but little else. On the aff, the debate is sometimes over after the MG, if the LOC is particularly weak, but most of the time, the PMR has to make the big decision about what arguments to go for and figure out where the win is.
The MO and PMR are the control roles. Their job is to win the debate. And when we think of talented MOs and PMRs, the same suite of skills seems to pop up: round vision, a willingness to make big strategic decisions and strong collapses, and an ability to communicate a clear and coherent vision of the debate round. Speed, technique, and line-by-line skills are not as important for these speeches, because the job of the PMR and the MO is not to respond to every argument, but instead to identify the most important arguments and win those.
If the MO and the PMR are the control roles, the MG and the LO are the support roles. This is not to denigrate them - they are not more or less important than the control roles. They are just different, and designed to be complementary.
Since the debate generally cannot be won by the MG and the LO, their job should be to facilitate a round-winning speech by their partner. Speed, technique, and line-by-line responses are much more important for the LO and the MG - it is essential that the LOC lay out a complete strategy that maximizes the options of the MO, just as it is essential for the MG not to concede a bunch of arguments so that the PM can communicate a winning vision in the PMR without being point-of-ordered every three seconds.
Now for the most important point. I believe that most dysfunction and disharmony in partnerships can be explained by this theory of speaker roles - more precisely, by the failure of one or more of the debaters to embrace or understand their role.
When an LOC operates independently, under the assumption that they are the controlling debater, the opposition will consistently have difficulty winning important debate rounds. Because while the LO might come up with some brilliant arguments, if the MO does not understand those arguments they cannot be used to win the debate round. The same applies with brilliant MG arguments - if they are not explained or phrased in a way that the PMR understands them, they might as well be black holes. It is almost impossible for an LO to prompt and MO through their speech, or for an MG to prompt a PMR, without the prep time available in policy. If the MO doesn't get it, the opp loses, because the MO is when the debate is won.
In properly functioning partnerships, the MO captains the opposition strategy. The off-case positions are ones that the MO is comfortable winning - politics or criticisms that the MO is well-versed in, or disads written by the MO during prep time or during the PMC. The LOC is not a robot, certainly; but to the extent they are generating arguments independently, their goal has to be to make those arguments as clear to their own MO as possible, and as close to the MO's knowledge base as possible. And, most importantly, whenever there is any disagreement between the LO and the MO during the round, the MO wins. Even if the MO is wrong, it is better to defer to the MO and their vision of the debate round, and try to resolve the communication problems outside of the round.
The affirmative requires slightly more balance between the PM and the MG. The PM is still the control role, and the MG is still the support role, but due to the fact that the MGC has to be more extemporaneous by its nature, the PM has to surrender some level of control over the specific arguments that the MG is making. Still, the goal of the MG is not to win the debate round on their own, but to neutralize negative arguments and lay the groundwork for a winning rebuttal in a way that the PM understands. And, again, if there is a disagreement between the MG and the PM, then the PM wins. The PM is ultimately responsible for making the big strategic decisions and "winning" the debate round. Good MG's will check in with their partner on a regular basis while going down the flow, saying "anything else?" at the bottom of any position that they respond to, to give the PM a chance to prompt an MG on a single argument they think is compelling, or to ensure that an important argument is responded too.
The nature of these roles means that most partnerships work best with one debater as the PM/MO and the other as the LO/MG, in order to ensure that each debater is responsible for the same role on both sides of the topic. A double member/double leader partnership is trickier, because the debaters have to alternate between control and support, which can create some tricky interpersonal dynamics - but it's doable, as Sarah and I can attest to. But, still, right now, if you look at the top 4 teams in the NPTE rankings, all four of them split speaker roles in the same way - Testerman, Warren, Campbell, and Heckendorn take the control roles and the primary strategic responsibilities, and Donaghy, Smith, Selck, and Morton take the support roles and primary technical responsibilities. It's not about being better or worse - it's about being complementary, and embracing the responsibilities inherent in your speech and your role in getting the ballot.
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