I just received an one of the oddest emails I have ever enjoyed. The author asked me if I made up the incident about the kindergarteners and the spaghetti, and said he (she?) thought that someone on another website had "proved" I had. I am flattered to be credited with such an extravagant imagination. Sadly, my lies are all of the dull, workaday sort: "I had no idea I was going so fast." "I have to wash my hair." If I were going to make up stirring anecdotes about failure, they would involve plucky cocker spaniels crossing America in search of their family, not small children and pasta.
The speech was given at last year's US Gel conference, by a fellow from Palm whose name now escapes me. I suppose he might have been making it up, but one expects that the head of their UI operation has better ways to spend his day than making up weird stories to tell at small conferences. Also, he had pictures.
The fellow is most likely Peter Skillman
And a more timely recollection of it here
But, once I had the name, I can see that he has used that story in different places, including TED 2006.
I believe Tyler Cowen told the same story at some point on Marginal Revolution, though I couldn't find it in the archives.
Two things:
1) Any time you're presented with a "But if we only had the wisdom of small children!" answer, lesson, parable or analogy it pays to be dubious. Very dubious.
Small children -- they're wiser than engineers! (Um . . . okay. Whatever.)
This is one reason many of the smarter and more cynical students drop out of Intro Sociology and Women's Study classes in the opening weeks. People (both professors and fellow students) have feel-good, anti-intellectual anecdotes like that one and, oh, someone can stir up a lot of wrath by questioning them.
Anyway, the alleged results (the kindergarten students did the best!) of this alleged experiment give off a similar way, way dubious vibe.
I have major doubts. Not about your veracity, but about this whole thing as reported.
2) Andrew Sullivan is a fine capable blogger, but not without his faults. One of which is he'll believe any "study" or mention of "a study" that seems interesting or that confirms something he already believes or wants to believe. (A study shows people who listen to the Pet Shop Boys are better problem solvers! A study shows people who like beards are more open minded! A study show conservatives . . . whereas liberals . . . but . . . . Here's the link!)
So you may be suffering as a fellow Atlantic blogger not from guilt-by-association, but doubt-by-association. There has been too much bad math and pseudo-science under the blue & white 'The Atlantic.com heading.
a snippet is here
http://www.gelconference.com/videos.php
for my money, the best conference pitches were:
Pinker
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/163
Gilbert
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/97
I was in one of those team building exercises, making a bridge out of paper and tape.
There were no children, but our team made a bridge that LOOKED like it was made by children.
Result: Other teams had bridges between 0.5 and 1 metres long. Our's was 5 metres.
I have no problem believing you, or doctorpat, and I am even prepared to believe Skillman, but normally any story told by a professional public speaker (especially a motivational speaker) needs to be treated with suspicion.
That's no reason to accuse you of making it up, of course. But remember that for some reason, people who speak at business conferences aren't factchecked on a regular basis.
He's not a professional speaker. His profession is heading the team in charge of Palm's user interface. Speaking is strictly a sideline.
"I saw a great speech a little while back by the guy who's in charge of designing new products at Palm. He talked about an excercise that he does with various groups, where he gives them pieces of spaghetti and some tape and tells them to build the tallest structure they can.
Engineers do all right; MBAs do the worst, because they waste time arguing about who will be in charge. But the best performing group? Kindergartners." - Megan McArdle
Well, with all due respect we're calling bull.
Get some proof. That shouldn't be too hard. You're with the Atlantic now. Make a call; send an e-mail.
Let's hear exactly how the five-year-olds in kindergarten built a better structure to order than the engineers. Sounds fascinating.
And, yeah, the guy's credits or resume don't count as proof. Not in the least.
Me, I'm guessing it's not going to turn out like you describe above. But, hey, I've been wrong before.
I'm not trying to be rude and I enjoy the blog overall. But come now . . . can you read your paragraph above and not have doubts? It doesn't conjure up images of vintage Naomi Wolfe or a friend telling you about the amazing things her psychic "knew"? Not even just a little?
Is the Palm Handheld empire really so daunting that you'd buy the feel-good story of that "exercise" without reservation?
*shrug* I have a masters in mechanical engineering, and, assuming the contest was time limited I find this entirely believable.
I've done similar activities, and generally the team that doesn't do any engineering makes the best structure.
The part about the MBAs being the worst because they spent to much time deciding who would be in charge sounds bogus to me too, for two reasons. First, would there be such competition to be the head of such a meaningless exercise? And second, don't MBAs get tons of practice with group projects in b-school?
Then again, Megs has been to b-school and I haven't, so she might know better.
RMH,
How long did it take to explain the goal of "the exercise" (or "similar activity") to your fellow engineers? How long did it take to pass out the spaghetti and explain that you guys couldn't put it in your mouths? How long to get you to actually take it out of your mouths? Was there a lot of pushing? How was crying handled?
I'll defer to your knowledge of engineers, but have you dealt with five-year-olds?
I thus have trouble buying that "time limited" was the difference. I imagine your fellow engineers could form a structure to the ceiling well before the kindergartners stopped shoving or wrapped up preliminary bathroom breaks.
Though, of course, that wouldn't make an inspirational story about how We Should All Take A Lesson From The Little Children And Not Be Afraid To Fail!
Sure, it's easy to sneer at the Gel conference as a Docker's commercial come to hideous life for 48 hours, but, honest to God, you'd think the level of dubious speaker kistch out there would be, at least, a notch above what you'd have found in a Intro Women's Studies class in the 1980s.
LC,
I think the link establishes that Megan was not making up the story. I suspect the story is true. I agree with you that the interpretation is suspect.
When I've seen things like this done, it's not some actual controlled study... it's an activity at some social event for the company/university/whatever. Which is why you actually have engineers, MBAs, and kindergarteners in the same place at the same time. This means that the kids do well because
a) it's a break from the mind-numbing adult stuff that came before, so that they jump right in instead of taking time to be cajoled into playing along.
b) they haven't been drinking beforehand.
Perhaps that's not the setting Skillman described. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was. I have a hard time imagining anyone actually setting up a real experiment with human subjects approvals etc.
Of course, the dubiousness of the anecdote doesn't necessarily mean that the take home message is wrong either. It just doesn't support it.
Jim Hu,
I agree that the message/lesson might be a valid one, even if it doesn't follow from the experiment or if the experiment, itself, is of little worth. (The person writing in the link seemed to interpret the moral in a slightly different fashion, but no matter. They could both be legit lessons, however heartwarming.)
What's more, I never thought McArdle was making this up. I just thinking she's either falling for something she should have seen through in a few seconds or slanting things through memory. She thus shouldn't be surprised – or even hurt – when she received an e-mail politely impugning her integrity. It may come down to either insulting that or her intelligence. Or, okay, just examining how much more likely she is to fall for a ludicrous proposition put forth by someone she respects at a gathering where massive career networking is going on.
In a week when people, herself included, are looking back on how they got Iraq so wrong this is probably relevant to larger issues.
McArdle actually used The Spaghetti Incident to explain her initial feelings about Iraq and why they weren't off base. I fear she may be missing a larger, considerably more ironic and pathetic lesson. And it's not about the need to fail as a prologue to innovation. It's about gullibility, the desire to believe, being snowed by people who impress you and, yes, perhaps even going along with the crowd when it may help your own career.
(Or, hey, perhaps I'm just exasperated because dubious stuff like this is, in itself, enraging and not all of us were lucky enough to study engineering in college or gradschool! This preposterous anecdote-with-lesson so smacks of what many courses in the humanities were like in the 80s and 90s that my head wants to explode in a Proustian rush of awful memory! But I vent. Forgive me.)
You state that you suspect it was an informal activity set up at some social event, perhaps for a university.
McArdle wrote "He talked about an exercise that he does with various groups, where he gives them pieces of spaghetti and some tape and tells them to build the tallest structure they can."
Okay, not a controlled experiment, but that seems to imply he does it at different times with different groups, no?
Finally, sure, if the adults are liquored up then all bets are off as far as results go. Point conceded. But that makes for a very different moral (and, yes, the amusing image of drunk engineers giggling and throwing spaghetti strands at each other. Rock on, dudes.)
Hi,
This is an amusing set of exchanges and I want to thank all you folks for correctly identifying the source. I led this design exercise over the years for about five or six hundred people in the US, Japan (Todai), Taiwan (Telecom Engineers) and lots of business school students. I am not a professional lecturer (although I did teach design at Stanford for a few years while I was working at IDEO). I am a design guy, that is what I'm passionate about. I like to design and build things and when I want to get away from it, I design and build more things.
Anyway, here is what I learned: status exchanges are a big hindrence to creativity, early to market is usually bad, multiple iterations beat a single minded focus on one idea, challenging the rules and asking for more resources is key, people do better when they are having fun etc.
I did a big piece with a great team for Nightline (The Deep Dive at IDEO), you can see some of that process in place there.
Many design profesionals are awful about taking credit for the work of others that work under them. My experience is the culmination of working with lots of other inspiring people that teach me everyday. Dennis Boyle at IDEO is one of my heroes here. Another is Jeff Hawkins.
Kindergarteners remind you about what you forgot. Anyone can do great design work if they don't get in their own way.
Cheers,
Peter
Email me at Peter.skillman@palm.com if you want to talk about this.