Pasta, Marshmallows, and an Egg: The Tools for Collaboration

I like attending the workshops at the union office. I find them very enlightening. Attending the one today was a very welcome thing, to get me away from vegetating too long inside my place. It ended up being a fun day. The activity that was most appealing to me in this session was an exercise involving collaboration with a team. Our task was to build a tower with dried spaghetti and marshmallows, as high as we could, which could support a single raw egg on top of it, within a time limit of twenty minutes.

I liked it because not only it was an opportunity to play around and experiment with my limited knowledge of architecture and engineering, but because I got to see how my leadership style works, and how I operate in a team setting. I prefer spending much of my time living and working independently; so I admit and acknowledge that I'm a little oblivious about my personal style of collaborative problem solving and involvement in teamwork.

When it came to task, I introduced the idea of a geodesic design to the group and showed them what a tetrahedral structure looks like, and how to take these small units and build onto them in a patterned frequency for a supportive structure. The idea was totally foreign to these guys, but they caught on quickly after I gave a demonstration. Another guy gave some input as to how reinforce the base's struts, the two women of our four member group were reacting a little frantically as we neared the end, just about knocking it down, but they created an innovative design for the "egg cradle". The structure got somewhat sloppier as it got higher, as we were rushed to finish before time was up, but we still won the challenge, not only in height, but I would dare say we also won in terms of aesthetic appeal compared to the others at the 00:00 mark.

There was more than one dimension in which this was enjoyable. It was just working with a good team itself. My current reluctance to work or play in teams is a result of witnessing/being involved in too many bad teams with in the past. As minor as this recent accomplishment was, I realized that this has been the first time in a long time that I've been able to have a group of more than two people work with me* on a project without naysaying, negativity, bickering, impudence, big egos, sore losers, nagging, or just the outright ignoring and rejecting of any (or my) ideas without reason when sharing constructive input** in a brainstorming session. It showed me how important an environment of respect, focus, trust, honesty, encouragement, support, and solidarity is to have when I do join teams, and just how much those elements have been lacking in the dynamics of most team settings I was stuck in. It's a tall order to ask for. It gave me insight as to why I so often choose to work alone and independently.

TED lecturer, Tom Wujec, has a better explanation of the potential team building exercise with similar such materials and objectives than what I can present. I embedded a link for a video for better elaboration. I wish our prize was $10,000 worth of software.

Tom Wujec on Tower and Team Building.

 

If you should be so curious and adventurous as to try out what we did, here is the challenge:

 

Materials

• 900g dried spaghetti
• 500g bag of large marshmallows (use the fruit flavoured ones if you want to be colourful)
• 1 raw egg

Object: As stated above, build a tower as high as you can with the pasta and marshmallows, that's strong enough to support the weight of a raw egg placed on top of it. Good Luck! Do your best!

 

Here is the link to the official site for the rules of the real Marshmallow Challenge

*- Just to clarify: I work best one on one with people, like me and tolerate being around one or two other co-workers. Larger teams are my challenge. 
**- To rub salt in the wounds, it especially pisses me off when my theory was right to begin with; then some other bozo in the group comes around to opting what I originally suggested, and then tries to claim credit for it when it does works out. I make it a point to weed such people out of my life, and stop working with such bottom-feeding parasites. It has happened often enough that I'm still unwilling to share thoughts in a group setting.