Build a Tower, Build a Team

The Tedtalk Build a Tower Build a Team, presented by Tom Wujec, demonstrates a seemingly easy group activity that produces unexpected and fascinating results. The results of this task reveal some of the reasons why teams face challenges and solutions to inefficient collaboration.

The most intriguing point made by Mr. Wujec is his explanation of why kindergarteners consistently demonstrate high performance on this activity and are more successful than groups composed of recent business school graduates. He explained that unlike the recent graduates, kindergarteners weren’t competing to be the leader of the group and were constantly refining a prototype throughout the given time. The behaviours and results of each team depended on many factors including team composition. The older group was composed of recent business graduates who recently spent a lot of time developing leadership skills. It is likely that many of them took on the role of the dominator. Individualistic role behaviours are counterproductive as they can create hostility among group members competing to be leader, hindering the potential for successful collaboration. The kindergarteners success can also be attributed to their action process. The kindergarteners were constantly working on successive prototypes that provided them with feedback on what did and didn’t work. The business school grads spent most of their time planning for the single best solution and little time testing different models. Often the older teams would only start building the structure until the end, leaving minimal time to rebuild should the structure fail. Although I did not expect these results prior to watching this Tedtalk, I now understand and agree with Mr. Wujec’s explanations for why certain groups performed better than others.

Another result that I found fascinating was when Mr. Wujec described why the results of groups composed of CEO’s increased when an executive admins were added to the groups. Mr. Wujec...