A635.4.3.RB - Build a Tower, Build a Team

My reflection blog this week is to reflect on the Ted Talk Video Build a Tower, Build a team by Tom Wujec. I will provide insight to whether I agree with Tom Wujec’s analysis of why kindergartners perform better on the Spaghetti Challenge than MBA students? Are there any other reasons why kids might perform better or provide my view why CEOs with executives perform better than a group of CEOs. Lastly provide any insight or take away that I took from this video if I was asked to facilitate process intervention workshop.

Build a Tower, Build a Team

The video about building a tower, building a team was intriguing to listen to how MBA students, CEO and Kindergartens were able to perform the spaghetti challenge. The challenge seemed very simple and as I was listening I thought of my own interaction with my own three-year-old grandson, who I recently spent time building a log cabin with Lincoln logs. After we dumbed all the logs out on the table I immediately when to the instructions and started to sort all the logs. My grandson just starting building his house.  Of course I wanted a plan on how we were going to do this and he could care less about having a plan. We both went on to build our own house and he beat me getting the task completed. According to Wujec, I was “jockeying for power and I am trained to find that single right plan.” My grandson went straight to the roof and built his house and he has built this house before and had gained “instant feedback about what works and what does not” (Wujec, 2017)

I agree that the analysis of why kindergartens perform better based on the idea of group process, where how the group goes about accomplishing the task (p. 200) Kindergartener are not plagued with barriers such as who is in charge, follow a defined plan, or who is to do what work.  I would like to assume they are a bit more creative because they began building with the end state in mind, the marshmallow. As a project manager, it has been instilled in my mind that you cannot execute a project with a plan or a schedule. This plan requires input from engineers, contracts, finance, and program managers, and when you put them all in the same room it takes time to get anything accomplished because everyone has their own idea on how a schedule should be developed. So I do agree that kindergartens would do much better because they are not tainted yet with the culture of project management. (Brown, 2011)

A couple years ago, my team attended a team building exercise that included building a tower out of tinker toys. We were on a time limit of less than twenty minutes and the end goal was to build the tallest tower. When we arrived, we sat with our peers because we are a culture of people who like to migrate with our co-workers. The instructor of the course gave the instructions and we knew immediately who the engineer would be and who the spokesperson for the group would be. Before we began, the instructor has us number off and split all of our groups up. I did not know a person at my table. Immediately the team began identifying their skill sets and roles were defined and the synthesizing and generalizing began. The group was “taking ideas or feelings from others and attaching them to the entire group” (p. 204) There was a lot of coaching and support going on as we built our tower. At the end, we had a tall tower but we did not win the challenge of a tall tower. We did win as a team because no one was shy and we instilled collaboration and feedback as we went along.  Brown stated that “group process is the foundation of process intervention sis the study of how groups and the individuals within groups behave” Our group project was definitely aligned with studying how we interacted with each other. (Brown, 2011)

CEO and Admins

I liked the idea about how a CEO with an executive admin would do better than a group of CEO’s trying to accomplish the same task. In the video it talked about how the admins have specialized skills in facilitation. Wujec talked about how those with facilitation skills “know how to manage and understand the process which will significantly improve a teams’ performance.” I think this is important for any team because if we have too many people who are vying to be in charge or swayed by their own strategy could put a damper on the team’s ability to perform. (Wujec, 2017)

Reflecting on the scenario with CEOs, a person in this position automatically has position power. However, leaders need to be able to “determine not only the depth of the desired intervention but also the relative advantages and disadvantages of various possible interventions” (p206) As leader is critical to understand who is on the team and the skills they bring to the table. My personal perspective is we can no longer operate in silos as leaders. The more we are open to creativity or difference it could be an advantage to the team. I think kids perform better than CEO’s because they are creative thinkers and they are not vying for any rewards because they were an effective leader. They just want a prototype with a marshmallow on top.  (Brown, 2011)

Conclusion

I truly enjoyed this video and as a leader it was a reminder that there are multiple ways to intervene when working on a project. I can have a clear vision and plan, but change is inevitable and we need to be able to be flexible, have an open mind, and I don’t need to have control. Reflecting on the project with my grandson I was trying to control the project but most importantly I was teaching him to be controlling. I didn’t know realize this until I watched this video. Just shows that we must continue to have a self-awareness of our own behaviors and children are learning from those around them.

References

Brown, D. R. (2011). An Experiential Approach to Organizational Development. (Eighth, Ed.) Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Wujec, T. (2017). Build a Tower, Build a Team. Retrieved from Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower