Start story

Start story: Kindergarteners vs. CEOs - The Unexpected Results of the ‘Marshmallow Challenge’

Two groups, kindergarteners and CEOs, were tasked with building a free-standing structure using only raw spaghetti, string, and masking tape. They also had to balance a marshmallow on top of their tower.

Results: The CEOs performed poorly because they focused on devising a single perfect strategy.

The kindergarteners, on the other hand, didn’t start with a strategy. They simply began building. While some attempts were shaky and their towers collapsed, they learned what worked and what didn’t as they went along. Within the same timeframe, they built several “faulty” towers and still ended up with higher structures than the CEOs.

Similarly, when creating a new Tableau dashboard, it’s important to plan each KPI and data source. However, unless you start coding in SQL, you won’t encounter the real challenges. So, start early rather than late!