{"id":31646,"date":"2021-04-11T15:24:57","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T19:24:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=31646"},"modified":"2025-10-03T11:07:40","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T15:07:40","slug":"spaghetti-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/spaghetti-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Spaghetti Challenge: Build a Tower, Build a Team"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What was Peter Skillman’s spaghetti challenge experiment? What do the results of the experiment teach us about effective teamwork?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Skillman’s spaghetti challenge experiment teaches us that that the intellect or experience of individual team members is not the key indicator of team success<\/a>. Rather, it is their ability to work together as a unit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read about Peter Skillman’s spaghetti challenge experiment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s note: This article is part of\u00a0Shortform\u2019s guide to team-building<\/a>. If you like what you read here, there\u2019s plenty more to check out in the guide!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Skillman’s Spaghetti Challenge Experiment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Why do certain organizations become greater than the sum of their parts while other groups fall short? This is the question that designer and engineer Peter Skillman set out to answer. To this end, he developed a test to determine how group synergy impacted success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He asked two teams (one consisting of kindergartners and the other\u2014of MBA students) to build the tallest structure possible using uncooked spaghetti, tape, string, and a marshmallow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The MBA students built structures that averaged about 10 inches. However, the kindergarteners built structures that averaged 26 inches. How did kindergarteners<\/em> outperform MBA students<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The MBA students got caught up in a process known as status management<\/em>. Status management is when team members attempt to figure out who\u2019s in charge, where they fit into the group, and how they are supposed to interact with their fellow team members. The MBA students spent so much time trying to figure all of this out that they failed to effectively solve the problem in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The kindergarteners, on the other hand, had no concerns about their place in the group. Instead, they immediately began experimenting, playing with different methods of construction, calling out issues as they saw them, and offering assistance to their team members without hesitation. Though their efforts seemed chaotic, they were actually working in a more efficient way than their business school counterparts. The kindergarteners may not have had the education, experience, or skills that the MBA students possessed, but their interactions were informed by a group culture that allowed them to work without fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Final Thoughts<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

So, what does all this have to do with teamwork? The results of Skillman’s experiment show that the intellect or experience of individual team members is not the key indicator of success. Rather, it is their ability to work together as a unit. Think of group culture like a machine. If all of the cogs are intricate but don\u2019t operate with the other cogs, the machine won\u2019t run. You\u2019re left with an expensive, but useless piece of junk. On the other hand, if all of the cogs operate smoothly with one another, the machine runs efficiently, even if some of the cogs aren\u2019t as developed as the others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What was Peter Skillman’s spaghetti challenge experiment? What do the results of the experiment teach us about effective teamwork? Peter Skillman’s spaghetti challenge experiment teaches us that that the intellect or experience of individual team members is not the key indicator of team success. Rather, it is their ability to work together as a unit. Read about Peter Skillman’s spaghetti challenge experiment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":31660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,9],"tags":[254],"class_list":["post-31646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-management","category-psychology","tag-the-culture-code","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nSpaghetti Challenge: Build a Tower, Build a Team - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What can kindergarteners teach us about teamwork? Quite a bit actually! 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