When kindergarteners regularly outperform MBAs, CEOs, and lawyers in the same task, it is not a cute story — it is a diagnostic on how ego, status, and overthinking quietly destroy execution.
What the Marshmallow Problem Actually Shows
In the Marshmallow Challenge, teams are asked to build the tallest free‑standing tower using spaghetti, tape, string, and a marshmallow on top. The pattern is consistent:
- Kindergarteners dive straight in, test early, and keep iterating.
- Professionals plan, negotiate roles, protect their image, then place the marshmallow on top at the end — and watch it collapse.
The difference is not intelligence. It is behaviour. One group treats the exercise as play; the other treats it as a performance review.
Low Ego Teams Outperform High Status Teams
High‑status groups often get trapped in slow, ego‑driven patterns:
- Arguing to be right instead of testing to learn.
- Overplanning a single elegant solution instead of iterating.
- Protecting reputation, which makes failure feel unsafe.
By contrast, low ego teams behave more like the kids:
- No one is jockeying for status — they just start building.
- Failure is feedback, not a verdict on anyone's intelligence.
- The marshmallow gets tested early, so the structure strengthens with each attempt.
Insight: Experience only becomes a competitive advantage when ego is kept out of the way. Otherwise, it simply fuels more confident mistakes.
Turning the Lesson into a Leadership Advantage
You cannot make your team smarter overnight, but you can make it lower ego and higher learning very quickly. Three practical moves:
- Normalize early, ugly prototypes. Ask to see the first rough version, not the polished slide deck. Reward teams for testing assumptions fast, even if the first build fails.
- Shift from “prove your idea” to “test our idea.” Make experiments shared, not personal. When the idea belongs to the team, no one person's ego is on the line.
- Design in psychological safety. Make it clear that being wrong in the first iteration is expected. The only unacceptable outcome is not learning anything.
The real marshmallow in your business is any critical unknown that has not yet been tested in the real world. Strategy that never leaves the meeting room is just a beautiful tower waiting to collapse.
For a deeper dive into the full story and its implications for culture, leadership, and strategic execution, explore the full Marshmallow Problem article.