Make all your Obstacles into Opportunity

The other day we lost power at work--and realized it was not just our building, but an entire zone of the city. So we took advantage of the time and played a team-building game I had prepared in advance, with no pre-conception of when, or if, we'd be able to use it (thanks to Aurelien for pointing me Tom Wujec's Marshmallow Challenge):

We first did the challenge according to the rules. The tower that Christophe and Julien built empirically, bit-by-bit, won. The over-engineered version didn't reach completion.

Christophe and Julien, Victors!

Couldn't quite finish...

We did a de-brief, but I don't want to write a spoiler. Try the game yourself... the person who reads all the instructions at www.marshmallowchallenge.com will lose out on the experiential learning, but will still have fun.

Then we played a bit more, without time constraints. We all wanted to know a bit more about what was possible with string, spaghetti, and marshmallows. This time the most structurally sound design won:

Franck and Christophe with wobbly sphaghetti

Sylvain and Olivier, Grand Designers