A635.4.3.RB – Build a Tower, Build a Team
Wujec’s (2010) description regarding the newly graduated kindergartens’ process of building the marshmallow tower made sense. The kindergartens built prototypes after prototypes ensuring that in every prototype, the marshmallow is on top giving them multiple chances and experience in fixing their prototypes until they have successfully created the highest and most impressive marshmallow towers. Children by nature do not have the inclination the things are not impossible to achieve, and that everything is attainable. Unlike the MBA students who are well versed in the things that they can and cannot achieve or do. As Wujuec (2010) said, they have been well trained in adopting and executing a single plan. They have experienced failures and rejections surrounded by regulations, procedures, and rules.
According to Lucas et al. (2013), children can understand the causal relationships instantaneously and create far-reaching causal determination from the events they observe. Children can learn and perform more superior than adults because they have the tendency to agree on doing the things that they are asked to do first then in the process figure out how to accomplish the task as they go. Regardless of the multiple times that they were told no, they never stopped asking for what they want, and better yet, they never stop asking the question “why.” We should be more often like children to succeed and become an agent of change in the workplace and in our community. Lastly, children are emotionally present and are very inventive or creative in problem-solving,. For example, if we put 5 children of different culture, background, to the extent speaking different languages, they will find a way to communicate to each other. Unlike us adult, we tend to withdraw from the group and pretend that we are busy and has somewhere else to be.
In the case of CEOs performing significantly better when an executive assistant was assigned to the group of the marshmallow tower project, it also makes sense. CEOs are highly skilled, intelligent, and strategic individuals but when it comes to the coordination and scheduling their sensitive, confidential, and important meetings, they are lost without their executive assistants. Executive assistants to the CEO familiarize themselves to the needs of their CEO. Their job functions are not only to schedule meetings, prep materials for the meeting, etc., but they are also the CEO’s business partner, understanding the politics of any situation, the company’s business functions. Most importantly, EAs play a strategic support and management role where they know how their CEO thinks and why they think the way they do.
As a leader, there will be times that I will have the need to facilitate a process intervention workshop. Wujec’s (2010) video is a good start to formulate the workshop outline. Mainly, the most essential focus of the workshop must be able to bring and apply all of group members’ senses and the best of their thinking to the task at hand, ensuring accumulation of imperfect informational signals and reputational tensions do not get in the way during the workshop. It is critical to set-up the stage of the workshop where members of the group have a convenient and safe avenue to raise rational and logical concerns about workplace issues. Once trusting relationship environment has been developed, it is inevitable that the employees will openly share their innovative and creative thinking knowing that their shared ideas are valued.
As a facilitator, I have to be able to communicate with the group in a clear and concise manner without ambiguity. Strong communication initiative is essential for building a collaborative team and trust within the team. With an open, clear or transparent communication channels, it opens a variety of directions leading to new ideas, creativity, and innovations. A team that consistently challenges each other positively, learning from each others’ ideas, culture, abilities, and skills is an excellent tool for planting the seed for future innovations and creativity.
Many organizations benefit greatly when their workforce can collaborate to achieve organizational goals and have the capacity to get to know each other and understand how to work cohesively. There are a variety of ways that teamwork can be vital to the success of an organization as well as developing the abilities and skills of the workforce. Team-building workshops are some of the ways that can increase the communication skills of the employees and also improve staff’s morale and productivity. Enabling employees to solve their problems, making decisions, devising innovative determinations, and letting them feel that their contributions to the company are valued, is a form of employee empowerment.
According to Whetten & Cameron (2016), there are two impediments to creative problem-solving. First, our interpretation of creativity is that creativity is limited to generating ideas, in short, it is one dimensional. We are seldom not aware that to be creative, there are multiple strategies of creativity available to us. Second, We are also unaware that we have unknowingly cultivated some conceptual blocks regarding our problem-solving creativity. Those blocks that inhibit us from solving problems effectively and efficiently are often more of a personal nature.
My take away is that moving forward, to prevent constraint(s) that would limit my ability in the future, I need to develop patience, step back and look at the problem presented to me with a broader perspective and approach it as an opportunity that I have not seen previously. I need to define the problem and sit with the involved individual(s) to review the problem and identify the cause of the problem. I have to be courageous enough to admit that I need help and concede that I cannot do it alone and ask the people around me to be collaborative without fear of coming across as incompetent.
References:
Brown, D.R. (2011). An experiential approach to organization development (8th ed.). Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Lucas, C.G., Bridgers, S., Griffiths, T., & Gopnik, A (2013). When children are better (or at least
More open-minded) learners than adults: Developmental differences in learning the forms of causal relationships. Cognition. Retrieved from https://cocosci.berkeley.edu/papers/WhenChildrenAreBetter.pdf
Whetten, D. and Cameron, K. (2016). Developing Management Skills Ninth Edition.
Pearson Education, Inc.
Wujec. T. (2010, February). Building a tower, build a team [Video File]. Retrieved from
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