6th August 2024
Imagine a room filled with people, divided into teams of 4 persons each. Each team gets 20 sticks of spaghetti, a yard of string, strips of scotch tape, and a single marshmallow.
They have 18 minutes to build a free-standing structure that will enable the marshmallow to rest on top. This is the so-called ‘Marshmallow Challenge,’ a staple of many design schools.
In an arresting TED talk, Autodesk fellow, Tom Wujec, shares data suggesting that, while the average team produces a tower with a height of about 20 inches, fresh business school graduates tend to significantly underperform the average.
Fresh-faced management graduates gather together & spend the first few minutes trying to establish dominance until one emerges as a leader.
The next few minutes are devoted to planning. Construction begins, usually with less than eight minutes left on the clock.
Then, with about a minute to go, someone places the marshmallow on top of the beautiful tower, and….it collapses.
While MBA students do poorly, kindergarteners beat the average.
Children don’t dither; they combine their energy, simply try something and if it doesn’t work, they try again.
The lesson here is that it’s hard to escape the conclusion that we all begin with creativity and curiosity, which too many of us systematically unlearn as we go through the education system and scale up the corporate ladder.
Secondly, Our egos come in the way of collaborating & we spend too much time & effort in managing egos.
Still, teams made up of CEOs do better than the fresh MBAs, though it’s not clear why.
Perhaps they started from a much higher base, but it is also possible that people who make it to the top find a way to recover at least some of those innate curiosity & manage egos.
What these findings show us is that if it’s possible to suppress your innate urge to be creative and curious, it’s also possible to unleash it again.
One way to tap into your inner kindergartner is to adopt what a Zen master would call “a beginner’s mind,” that is, to put yourself in situations where you don’t know the answer and don’t have the skills to find it.
At work that might involve volunteering for a new-product launch or taking an assignment in a new country.
Outside work that could mean learning a new language or picking up a new musical instrument.
‘Marshmallow Challenge’ is also being extensively used as a team building exercise.
Try it sometime at work or with family & friends.
Adopt a ‘Beginners mind,’ don’t lose your curiosity & creativity & stay blessed forever.