Build a Tower, Build a Team

I recently came across a TED video for my class this week, it was an interesting educational talk which pointed out how different target groups work when tasked to complete a challenge in a short amount of time. The task was called the “marshmallow challenge”, this is a challenge which made like-minded groups of people come up with a structure that can support a marshmallow in a matter of eighteen minutes. Tom Wujec, the creator of the challenge used this exercise to see how these different groups of people worked and why certain groups had the outcome that they did.  Tom makes a comparison to the way that kindergartners and MBA students work and to my surprise the kindergartners out-performed the MBA students: I would almost say that the kindergartners made fools of the MBA students.

 Tom makes an analysis of the situation and explains why the young kids did so much better. The result was that the kids got straight to work and had a trial and error type of strategy, this proved to be a good strategy for the kids. The MBA students had a completely different approach they almost tried “too” hard, they would first jockey for power, try to take charge and then come up with the perfect plan. This strategy seemed to fail for many reasons but the most obvious being the fact that making the perfect plan just takes too long. Tom makes a good point which I can agree with when it comes to this challenge, sometimes the perfect plan is not needed for every job in life. It is sometimes beneficial to just get the task done and try to have the group work as one, a leader is not always necessary.

                I think that another reason why the kids worked so much better is for the simple fact that they are not afraid to fail, this I can observe in my four year old son’s behavior. As adults and especially as professional’s we tend to have a fear of failing in front of others, this can cause people to over think projects. Kids just want to have fun, be creative, and are not too concerned with pride; there is definitely a lesson for adults to learn from this example.  

                There was another group of people which did well at this marshmallow project and that was the CEO’s with an executive assistant in the group. I believe that this is the case because CEO’s are good at giving direction and assistants are good at taking directions, there is no pride involved in this group. With this combination no one is jockeying for power because they already know what the roles of each person are, this creates more time to actually work at the task at hand. The lesson that I can take from this group of individuals is the fact that sometimes having an established leader or set of roles can have a huge impact on how quickly a group can accomplish the work which they are doing.  

The results of all of these different groups were very interesting and I think that any of us can take away a lot from these experiments. I think that if I were to facilitate my own process intervention workshop I know that I would have to focus on a project which can highlight the skills which are required in process intervention.  I would try to show the importance of a group which has a strong influence on task functions and also maintenance functions. In other words I would make sure that my groups know that even though it is important to work and complete the task, it is also important to make sure that we have people in the group that are carrying out maintenance functions like harmonizing to keep the group on track. This video has shown that we need a good balance in a group and also the fact that a group with too many “Chiefs” will not be successful in the long run. This is a lesson which I will carry through my career and one that I have lived by for quite some time now; balance of power in groups is essential to the success of a group.

Reference:

Wujac, T. (TEDS). (2010, FEBRUARY 10) Build a Tower, Build a Team [Online Video]

                Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower#t-1820