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Challenging Interventions

 

I’ve watched the Tom Wujec video (TedX, 2010) before and found it interesting in how the exercise of building a tower takes teamwork and each person has a very important role to play. Called the Marshmallow Challenge, teams use marshmallows and other objects to make the best tower in a neat and fun competition. Each team uses their own methods for addressing the problem and Wujec evaluates each on their performance.

Wujec attempts to make a connection with the audience in that successful business minded people perform worse at this exercise than kindergarteners. Wujec says this type of collaborative effort is the essence of the iterative process (2:00). Merriam-Webster defines iterative as utilizing the repetition of a sequence of operations or procedures (Merriam-Webster, 2021). I agree with Wujec’ analysis that kindergartners perform better on the Marshmallow Challenge than MBA students for two reasons. The first is because children at that age think in such simpler and unbiased ways that they’re quick to learn from their mistakes right off the bat. The simplicity in a child can more quickly navigate the challenge and result in more time available for the iterative process to flesh out better ideas or products. The second reason is that adults have much more bias and stronger personalities that would derail the group much faster than with children. Even the smartest MBA students could stumble upon a great answer, but when combined within a team, the timing for those ideas to come to fruition may take longer than the rules allow. When Wujec puts a $10,000 incentive on the exercise, every single team underperforms, and no towers are built. Why, he asks? High stakes have a strong impact (4:10). Children aren’t nearly as influenced as adults are in this circumstance. Adults can more clearly understand the importance of the incentive and the pressure of what winning or losing would mean.

Wujec notes that when you put an executive admin on the team of CEOs, they perform better because the admin has special skills of facilitation (0:45). I would agree with Wujec from my experience with admins. In general, CEOs have reached their positions by being very good at their jobs. Those skillsets don’t necessarily translate into having a skill like that of an admin. This is simply a difference between two positions where one can influence and navigate a company and the other can essentially herd cats. Certain skills are important to have in specific situations.  

If I was asked to facilitate a process intervention workshop, I would take a step back and evaluate the purpose of the exercise. I would ask the questions; Why are we doing this? What benefit will come from this or what am I trying to teach the players? What parameters, guidance or rules should we either put in place or take away? In conducting this modeling and setting the agenda, I would be structuring the challenge for specific purposes. To build a better tower is to build a better team (TedX, 2010). In the spirit of building relationships and teams, I would want the group to take action and work together to solve the challenge. A decision made by group consensus is one that all the members have shared in making one they will support and buy into even though they may not be totally supportive (Brown, 2011, p. 202).

Wujec discusses the hidden assumptions in the exercise and how the marshmallow challenge helps identify these to make people recognize what they’re doing and thinking in an effort to improve. Wujec says we must bring all of our senses to the tasks at hand and apply ourselves in the very best way possible. As he says, we can turn “un-oh” moments into “ta-da” moments (6:22). This is the takeaway that I believe I can immediately use in my own career intervention. Exploring my senses, reflecting upon decisions, and involving my coworkers would be a fantastic start to this challenge.

References

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Iterative. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved February 2, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/iterative

TedX. (2010, February). Build a tower, build a team. [Video file]. Retrieved 

https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower_build_a_team/transcript?language=en

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