What I learned About Team Building From the Spaghetti/Marshmallow Challenge

We were given 20 strands of uncooked spaghetti, one yard of masking tape, one  yard of #16 cotton string and a fluffy marshmallow. The challenge was to  work as a team to build the tallest structure in 18 minutes to support the marshmallow, using only those materials. It was part of a Chicago Ideas event hosted by Table XI.

Spaghetti/Marshmallow Challenge  was an interesting exercise in team dynamics, as we had to organize, cooperate, plan, test, adapt strategy and rebuild all within a fixed time table. Only about half of the teams successfully created a structure that was sufficiently strong to support the marshmallow because they tried to achieve unsupportable heights. Many saw their structures bend and break as they added the marshmallow at the last minute.

While this was originally set up as a team dynamic exercise, I also came to realized that the materials themselves served as a metaphor on team building.

Here is how the Marshmallow/Spaghetti Challenge played out for us.

All of the participants saw the spaghetti as the fundamental building material for both height and stability.

In all cases the tape assumed a traditional role as an adhesive, connecting spaghetti stands together.

Most of the teams treated the string as an afterthought. One of our team members suggested that it may have been included as a red herring to distract us.

The seemingly light fluffy marshmallow when suspended by flexible spaghetti became our key adversary. Per the rules it had to be supported at the top of the structure. Its weight threatened all the structures. Several teams did not add the marshmallow until the end of the building process only to discover this problem too late as their structures bent or snapped.

 

After the workshop, I reflected on the materials themselves and reexamined their individual roles as team members in the building process.

The spaghetti was indeed the core building material. But the problem was that the higher the structure the more it flexed. Our goal of attempting to achieve maximum height became our biggest challenge.

Through trial and error I realized that a vertical center core of spaghetti to support the marshmallow could take us to maximum height. Also small bits of Spaghetti with tape could be used as anchors for the string.

The spaghetti’s new team role was primarily to work together as one unit to support the marshmallow and with a secondary role as an anchoring component.

This created a new challenge – how to support the center core.

I then realized that the overlooked string could be separated into its individual strands, each of which were quite strong. By unraveling the single braided string I now had 16 yards of supporting and connecting materials. I used it to wrapped the core to make it more ridged and coupled it with the tape to reinforce the joints. The individual strands new key role was to serve as independent guy lines to support the core and keep it from flexing.

In contrast to the spaghetti, the string’s team role was greatly magnified as individual strands rather than as one unit.

The tape which had been used to connect spaghetti strands directly now had two team roles, that being as an anchor for the string strands and as reinforcement for the core’s joints.

As for the marshmallow, its team role was unchanged. It was to reside at the top of the structure to be supported by the team of materials. My new tower soared over 4 feet to 52 inches and could have gone a bit higher.

 

The key lesson was that by re-purposing the individual building components, respecting their strengths and deploying them in new roles to work together the entire structure became stronger and achieve maximum height.

The key question for you is – Are you using both the obvious and not so obvious strengths of your organization to achieve maximum height? If not I can help.

 

There is an interesting Ted Talk on the “marshmallow problem” here. More on Chicago Ideas here and Table XI here.