A635.4.3.RB
Build
a Tower, Build a Team
After viewing the TedTalk video, “Build a tower, build
a team”, I am asked to reflect on the following questions in a well-written
post on my Reflection Blog by answering the following questions:
- Do
you agree with Tom Wujec's analysis of why kindergartners perform better
on the Spaghetti Challenge than MBA students?
- Can
you think of any other reasons why kids might perform better?
- In
your view, why do CEOs with an executive assistant perform better than a
group of CEOs alone?
- If
you were asked to facilitate a process intervention workshop, how could
you relate the video to process intervention skills?
- What
can you take away from this exercise to immediately use in your career?
According
to Tom Wujec, “Several years ago here at TED, Peter Skillman introduced a
design challenge called the marshmallow challenge. And the idea's
pretty simple: Teams of four have to build the tallest free-standing
structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard
of string and a marshmallow. The marshmallow has to be on
top. And, though it seems really simple, it's actually pretty
hard because it forces people to collaborate very quickly. And
so, I thought this was an interesting idea, and I incorporated it into a
design workshop. And it was a huge success…So there are a number of
people who have a lot more "uh-oh" moments than others, and
among the worst are recent graduates of business school. They lie, they cheat, they get
distracted and they produce really lame structures. And of course
there are teams that have a lot more "ta-da"
structures, and among the best are recent graduates of
kindergarten. And it's pretty amazing. As Peter tells us, not only do
they produce the tallest structures, but they're the most interesting
structures of them all. So the question
you want to ask is: How come? Why? What is it about them? And Peter
likes to say that none of the kids spend any time trying to be CEO of
Spaghetti, Inc. Right? They don't spend time jockeying for power. But
there's another reason as well. And the reason is that business students
are trained to find the single right plan, right? And then they
execute on it. And then what happens is, when they put the marshmallow on
the top, they run out of time and what happens? It's a
crisis. Sound familiar? Right. What kindergartners do
differently is that they start with the marshmallow, and they build
prototypes, successive prototypes, always keeping the marshmallow on
top, so they have multiple times to fix when they build prototypes along
the way. Designers recognize this type of collaboration as the
essence of the iterative process. And with each version, kids get instant
feedback about what works and what doesn't work. (Wujec, 2010). I agree with Wujec’s analysis of why kindergartners
performed better than MBA students. In
addition to his reasons, here’s my take…kids just want to have fun! They are definitely less competitive at that
age and have no hidden agenda.
During
my military career, senior leaders were never without an assistant. Assistants took care of the busy tasks that
allowed the senior leader to more effectively perform his or her tasks. Assistance would manage the leader’s
calendar, correspondence, travel arrangements and other support tasks. This also has the same effect on civilian
CEOs.
I thoroughly
enjoyed the video and encourage everyone who reads this blog to view it. I plan on showing the video to my Cadets and
actually attempting the challenge. I
want to examine their critical thinking skills and the way they process ideas
and concepts as a team. I may even share
it with my Principal to potentially use as an exercise during our next staff
meeting.
References
Wujec, T. (2010, Feb). TED: Build a tower, build a
team. [Video File]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower
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