Last Friday, we celebrated our 4th Value: Build Good Stuff. As a fast-growing, agile tech company, Building Good Stuff is the essence of what we do!
To drive the point home, activities on the day centred around building fun projects. It was a day of invention, creativity, collaboration, and design. It was great to see some superb teamwork in action, which became fun and competitive at the same time!
The Marshmallow Challenge in Centurion
The Centurion team tackled three different building projects, but the one to highlight is the Marshmallow Challenge. The brief was to build the tallest tower out of 20 spaghetti sticks, one marshmallow, 1 metre of tape, and 1 metre of string. The teams had 20 minutes to complete the challenge. The structures were intriguing and funny, with one a clear winner. The best part of the exercise was the resultant entertainment and plenty of laughs that had been waiting for release from severe lockdown deprivation.
Tom Wujec, a technology pioneer, author, TED speaker, and Singularity University professor, has used the Marshmallow Challenge in hundreds of workshops to illustrate lessons on teamwork and collaboration. He found that pre-schoolers often outperform MBA graduates. There are several reasons for this, but one of the key reasons is the tendency for pre-schoolers to successfully experiment, and iterate, which leads to a better final product.
The Egg Drop Challenge in Cape Town
The aim was to build an adequate support structure around a raw egg so that it could survive a 2-metre drop. This challenge forced our teams to think creatively and to problem-solve. The Cape Town team demonstrated great ingenuity and construction skills. There were structures supported by parachutes, balloons, bubble wrap, marshmallows, water, and more. The stand-out build was the Space Eggs Dragon, complete with NASA branding. In the end, most importantly, all the eggs withstood the mighty fall.
We look forward to next Friday’s FUN FRIDAY: Think Super Differently.
