Wednesday, 26 August 2015

MARSHMALLOW CHALLEGE

We always talk about crisis management. Why is crisis management so important???? Puzzled, right?

We will talk about it with the help of a MARSHMALLOW CHALLEGE, which is a design challenge. The challenges are very simple and one of them is presented here. Challenge: The team of four have to build tallest free standing structure within 8 minutes. The apparatus provided was 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard tape, one yard string and one marshmallow. The only condition was the marshmallow has to be on top.

Well it seems very simple but actually it’s pretty hard because it forces people to collaborate very quickly. This interesting idea was once incorporated in the design workshop and there was the huge success. 70 different design workshops were conducted with students, graduates, designers, architects, etc. The deep lesson came out of this about the nature of collaboration.

Normally most of the people started by orienting themselves to the task, they spend some time planning, organizing, sketching the layouts, etc. They spent majority of the time assembling the sticks to build in the ever growing structure. And finally at the end someone takes up the marshmallow and gently put it on top. They stand back and admire their work but this Ta-Da moment turns to Oh-Oh moment when the structure collapses soon because of the weight of the marshmallow.

Survey along the world answered the 2 most interesting questions. 1st is who consistently performs poor and were caught in the clutches of Oh-Oh moments most of the time? The answer is Recent School Business Graduates. They produced really lame structures. Shocked???

2nd one is yet to be answered. The 2nd question is who consistently performs well and enjoyed Ta-Da moments most of the time?  And the answer is Kinder Garden students. They were not only able to produce most tallest but also more interesting structures. Analysis id shown in figure below.

So, now the question is how come? Why? What is about them? The reason for this is business students are trained to find a single right plan. Then they execute on it and finally when they put marshmallow on top, it’s a crisis. But the kinder garden students start with the marshmallow and then they built successive prototypes by always keeping the marshmallow at the top. So they get iterative feedbacks of what workas and what doesn’t work.
So this is an essence of collaboration. It is an iterative method consisting of steps prototype, refine, prototype, refine, continuously. 


Why to spent time to conduct this marshmallow challenge? It helps to identify the hidden assumption i.e it helps the team to identify the marshmallow in the project. Every project has its own marshmallow.

In nutshell, take up one idea. Make that one idea your life. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, and every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.
Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know there is something inside you that is GREATER than any obstacle.

Thank you for your time. If you are more interested you can visit marshmallowchallenge.com

No comments:

Post a Comment