In the marshmallow challenge, Wujec also points out that
CEO’s who have an executive assistant on their team do better at the challenge
then CEO’s alone. He explains that this
happens because the executive assistants have the special skills of
facilitation and of managing processes.
I can vouch for this first hand and I can see how facilitation skills
suffer when one steps out of the administrative role or spends more time
delegating tasks as CEO’s. Before I was
hired, my Director had my position as Assistant Director and she was under the
supervision of a person who travelled most of the time, therefore leaving her
to run the show. When I was hired, she
took the Director position and I took over a lot of the administrative tasks
and in turn left her open to focus more on working on reports, marketing plans,
future projections and other big projects.
She is really a wonder woman and has been able to run the office
flawlessly for many years without me.
When I started, we had a lot of changes not just in processes and
policies but technology as well. New
programs have replaced old ones and administrative functions have been
streamlined to make things more efficient. Since I’ve begun taking over many of the
administrative functions, she has begun to rely on me more and has allowed me
to take care of “managing the processes” while she oversees and works on bigger
projects and long-term goals. And
although she assists me when needed with the more mundane responsibilities, I
am very capable and delegate very little to her (this is one of the things I
need to work on). I have noticed over
the years that she is not as up-to-date with some of the newer processes or
some of the technology we use since I manage more of the everyday activities in
the office. I believe me and her make an
excellent team for this reason because she is able to focus on the types of
projects that would never get done if consumed by all the small processes
involved in keeping our office going. As
the facilitator, I see how things work, I watch how things evolve and can
better predict the outcomes sometimes because I have to fix and tweak things
constantly along the way.
I think that the marshmallow challenge is a
perfect example of how process intervention works. Brown defines process intervention as a
process that aims “at helping the work group to become more aware of its own
processes, including the way it operates, and to use this knowledge to solve
its own problems” (Brown, 2011, p. 199).
The marshmallow challenge is also a way to bring members of a group
together to work through a process to solve a problem, in this case create the
tallest structure that will hold a marshmallow.
Also the five crucial areas for effective organization performance which
are: “communication, member roles and functions in groups, group problem
solving and decision making, group norms and growth, and leadership and
authority” (Brown, 2011, p. 200) are also needed in successfully executing the
marshmallow challenge.
I think the biggest takeaway for me from Wujec’s
presentation is one of the main lessons of the marshmallow challenge which is to
“identify the hidden assumption” in the project or task that you are working
on. Sometimes we are so focused on what
we think we know about something that we miss everything else around it. So much of what we do on an everyday basis is
done with blinders on or automatically.
We tune out our feelings and intuition and rely on facts and what we see
with the human eye. There are so many
other ways to gather information and as Wujec explains that it “demands that we bring all of our senses to
the task, and that we apply the very best of our thinking, our
feeling and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand” (TED,
2010). I think the marshmallow challenge
and all problem-solving tasks challenge our realities, and the beauty of
working in teams is that you approach that challenge from many different angles
because of the advantage of multiple perspectives. The real feat of accomplishment is to learn to
respect every angle as a possible solution and work those angles together as a
group.
References
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