7th Period TEST (FOR 7TH PERIOD ONLY!!!)

Read the next two selections and answer the questions that follow.

The Culture Code

Excerpt by Daniel Coyle

1. 1  Let’s start with a question, which might be the oldest question of all: Why do certain

   groups add up to be greater than the sum of their parts, while others add up to be less?

2. 2  A few years ago the designer and engineer Peter Skillman held a competition to find out. Over several months, he assembled a series of four-person groups at Stanford, the University of California, the University of Tokyo, and a few other places. He challenged each group to build the tallest possible structure using the following items: twenty pieces of uncooked spaghetti, one yard of transparent tape, one yard of string and one standard-size marshmallow.

3. 3  The contest had one rule: The marshmallow had to end up on top. The fascinating part of the experiment, however, had less to do with the task than with the participants. Some of the teams consisted of business school students. The others consisted of kindergartners.

4. 4  The business students got right to work. They began talking and thinking strategically. They examined the materials. They tossed ideas back and forth and asked thoughtful, savvy questions. They generated several options, then honed the most promising ideas. It was professional, rational, and intelligent. The process resulted in a decision to pursue one particular strategy. Then they divided up the tasks and started building.

5. 5  The kindergartners took a different approach. They did not strategize. They did not analyze or share experiences. They did not ask questions, propose options, or hone ideas. In fact, they barely talked at all. They stood very close to one another. Their interactions were not smooth or organized. They abruptly grabbed materials from one another and started building, following no plan or strategy. When they spoke, they spoke in short bursts: “Here! No, here!” Their entire technique might be described as trying a bunch of stuff together.

6. 6  If you had to bet which of the teams would win, it would not be a difficult choice.
   You would bet on the business school students, because they possess the intelligence, skills, and experience to do a superior job. This is the way we normally think about group performance. We presume skilled individuals will combine to produce skilled performance in the same way we presume two plus two will combine to produce four. Your bet would be wrong. In dozens of trials, kindergartners built structures that averaged twenty-six inches tall, while business school students built structures that averaged less than ten inches.

7. 7  The result is hard to absorb because it feels like an illusion. We see smart, experienced business school students, and we find it difficult to imagine that they would combine to produce a poor performance. We see unsophisticated, inexperienced kindergartners, and we find it difficult to imagine that they would combine to produce a successful performance. But this illusion, like every illusion, happens because our instincts have led us to focus on the wrong details. We focus on what we can see—individual skills. But individual skills are not what matters. What matters is the interaction.

8. 8  The business school students appear to be collaborating, but in fact they are engaged in a process psychologists call status management. They are figuring out where they fit into the larger picture: Who is in charge? Is it okay to criticize someone’s idea? What are the rules here?Their interactions appear smooth, but their underlying behavior

   is riddled with inefficiency, hesitation, and subtle competition. Instead of focusing on the task, they are navigating their uncertainty about one another. They spend so much time managing status that they fail to grasp the essence of the problem (the marshmallow is relatively heavy, and the spaghetti is hard to secure). As a result, their first efforts often collapse, and they run out of time.

9. 9  The actions of the kindergartners appear disorganized on the surface. But when you view them as a single entity, their behavior is efficient and effective. They are not competing for status. They stand shoulder to shoulder and work energetically together. They move quickly, spotting problems and offering help. They experiment, take risks, and notice outcomes, which guides them toward effective solutions.

10. 10  The kindergartners succeed not because they are smarter but because they work together in a smarter way. They are tapping into a simple and powerful method in which a group of ordinary people can create a performance far beyond the sum of their parts.

    Excerpt from The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. Copyright © 2018 by Daniel Coyle. This text was used in fair use.

    0. How to Build Awareness for Lean Experimentation with Marshmallows

    1. by Lutz Gocke

    1 What happens a lot of times, is that the teams are all really motivated and very confident that their team is going to master the challenge and creates the highest freestanding structure. Within the 18 minutes people start planning for some minutes. They then build based on the plan and put the marshmallow at the end on top of the structure. This leads to a surprise. In 7 out of 8 cases the freestanding structure wasn’t built to last for 30 seconds after the 18 minutes were over. When we look at entrepreneurial ventures, it is a common pattern, that much time and money is invested based on an initial plan which doesn't work out in the end. This leads to a huge amount of entrepreneurial waste. There are four very essential learnings that we identified in our sessions and that we can transfer into the entrepreneurial world.

    2 Experimenting trumps planning in circumstances of uncertainty.
    There are two types of uncertainty Known-Unknowns and Unknown-Unknowns.
    We asked the participants of the marshmallow challenge in advance if they know the texture of the ingredients of the marshmallow challenge. 100% of the participants stated so far, that they know the ingredients of the marshmallow challenge with a confidence of 89%. The different ingredients—especially the marshmallow—are thus falling into the category of unknown-unknowns. The participants actually thought they know the ingredients, although they didn't know them in the end. Participants might know how the spaghetti and the marshmallow behave in a different context—eating, but this information doesn't really help in the marshmallow challenge. The uncertainty in the

    marshmallow challenge is quite high for the participants, especially because it is not recognized. Teams that were performing best in the marshmallow challenge were actually applying an experimental approach. They skipped the long planning period and started to build a freestanding structure relatively quickly.

    3. 3  Notice your riskiest assumption
       Another very important learning, that we could illustrate to the participants of the meetup and the lecture is, that it is highly important to experiment with your riskiest assumption first. The riskiest assumption in the marshmallow challenge is the marshmallow itself. If you don’t know whether a spaghetti breaks, when you put the marshmallow on top and if you don’t understand how the spaghetti reacts, it can blow up your freestanding structure at the end. The same is true for any entrepreneurial initiative. If you don’t recognize your riskiest assumption—your activities are under very high risks.

    4. 4  Beware of the overconfidence bias
       We’ve seen in our runs of the marshmallow challenge, that nearly all teams, see themselves as the winning teams. With a confidence level of close to 100%. With such a high confidence in your mind, there is a big risk of running into the overconfidence trap. This overconfidence trap is not only existing in the marshmallow challenge, but also in the entrepreneurial world. How many teams of entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs have been very confident about their idea, started to implement and realized soon enough, that their idea doesn’t work out. It is interesting to see, that the teams that actually mastered the marshmallow challenge in our case showed a lower confidence than the other teams. It’s very clear, why this is the case. With a high confidence, that you know the ingredients, that you know how to build a freestanding structure, and that your team is going to be the winning team, it is more difficult to experiment. You are very likely more arguing about the right plan instead of starting to experiment with the riskiest assumptions.

    5. 5  Team Size impacts speed of experimentation
       In our runs of the marshmallow challenge, we realized, that team size really matters to master the challenge. With a group of 2–3 people it is way easier to create a freestanding structure. You have fewer people that you must interact with and this means fewer people to create a consensus on the next best action. This is also a very important insight into entrepreneurial initiatives. The more people you start your journey with, the more people you need to integrate into the decision-making process on the way. You need to organize yourself to make something happen. But organizing is built on consensual validation which means that you are validating your own assumption by getting other people’s opinions to get to consensus. But this is fundamentally different from the experimental validation of the lean startup. Within consensual validation you already see power plays occurring between the different team members. These power plays and other consensus-seeking activities drain your time to validate your critical assumptions for real.

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