I was introduced not long ago by Pierre to the Marshmallow Challenge. This very fun challenge helps highlight the value of iterative work (and optimization), the value of heterogeneous and complementary teams. I recommend diving into the documentation and trying it at least once, it’s simple and quick. Played over 70,000 times, the largest gathering brought together 800 people, it’s not initially an agile workshop and yet it fulfills that role very well. The challenge is -starting with 20 spaghetti, 1 meter of tape, 1 meter of string and a marshmallow- to build the tallest tower, with the marshmallow having to appear (intact) at its top. For this, 18 minutes.

When analyzing the results, the authors discovered that while students or lawyers generally fail due to their excessive planning, elementary school children are “performers”! Ok ok ok. The idea is appealing, but that a group of elementary school children is more effective than an adult group at building a tower… The idea is nice, but I thought it was a bit “contrived.”

So this afternoon I took advantage of my son’s 9th birthday in the Garrigue of southern France to challenge the challenge. It was a somewhat hostile environment: no tables except one, groups of more than 4 people. The towers were therefore not extraordinary, but no matter, the result was beyond my expectations. Naturally the children handily beat the adults. The two children’s groups presenting a tower that was standing at the end, unlike the adults’ group.

As announced, but it’s always delightful to experience it, the children didn’t look for complications. They worked in cohesive groups, through trial and error and optimization. And this from the very start of the timer.

The adults, as for them, started late, with odd ideas. (For obvious reasons, including potential divorce, you’ll understand that I’m hiding the faces).

The children naturally reached the objective. The adults? … they first decided to start over, even with 3 people working on 3 different towers (yes indeed! the children would never have thought of that…). Then finally rushed toward a desperate solution when the countdown reached 3min. A desperate solution since it involved building a very tall tower, only to place the marshmallow far too late at the end of a stick, and watch the tower collapse -a classic of the marshmallow challenge-. Note that the adults complained about the materials (and not the children…).

The “TADA! … … Ooooohhhhhh…. " effect

And the winners are: