Tag Archives: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade

The Geothermal Institute are currently hosting a group of Indonesian and Phillipino geothermal energy professionals (from a wide range of disciplines) for a 4 week project management course.  This course is being as a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade sponsored initiative.  On Day 1 I wanted to "break the ice" (though the group are warm and friendly) and get the course participants working in teams.  The course has plenty of time for "techy" group work so instead of a task with a geothermal focus I set everyone the "Marshmallow" challenge.  This requires a group to build a structure to support some marshmallows using (dry!) spaghetti, and adhesive tape.  Some versions also offer the participants some string - but none was to be found in my kitchen cupboards the night before!  An outline of the challenge set up can be found here.

Some of the structures that resulted look like this.

Clearly specifying requirements matters in any project.  I had forgotten to mention that the structures needed to be freestanding - so this group cleverly took their structure to the ceiling.

Group dynamics in the marshmallow challenge is the subject of a TED talk by Tom Wujec.  So how do teams of various kinds do?  Unsurprisingly it depends on the skills, and the mix of skills in the team.  Tom Wujec's talk compares the performance of teams with different backgrounds in this graphic.

When I revealed this image to our course participants they found the first few bars entertaining!   Personally I enjoyed seeing the finding that teams which are a mix of CEOs and Executive Admins outperforms teams which are only have CEOs.  The organisation and facilitation skills Executive Admins bring are a very important part of delivering on the project goal.  I know the work I do really benefits from the professional staff around me who diversify the skill mix in the Department and the Institute.

But why did the young children do so well?  They experiment and prototype naturally - allowing them to test assumptions.  That supports innovation and creativity.  For more thoughts on being curious culturing creativity there's further discussion and advice here.

 

 

 

 

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I haven’t been blogging for a while – and I have missed taking the time to jot down some thoughts on things that are happening in my various roles at the University.  The end of the summer has been a busy time – lots of grant writing, and preparations to bring in a new class of both undergraduate and graduate students.

This week I’d like to focus on our new group of postgraduate students in the Master of Energy program.  The program is an interdisciplinary program for students from Science, Engineering and Business.  The program had around 40 students in various phases of their degree right now.

This week I’ve really enjoyed meeting the new intake of students.  They are all extremely energetic (excuse the pun!) and have a real hunger for knowledge that they truly hope to “change the world” with.  The majority of the students came from overseas – and literally come from every corner of the globe.  We have students from North America, South America, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Pacific all in class together.

I travel a lot and believe that global problems – such as improving access to clean energy worldwide – are best solved through global collaborations.  We kicked those collaborations off at an icebreaker event last week where the students worked on building models of energy related devices (such as wind turbines) from some kit-sets.  I look forward to seeing what ideas the students build while they are with us.

I enjoy the fact that the staff and students I work with have tremendously diverse backgrounds but share a passion for common scientific questions.  I am also proud that NZ’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade lists renewable energy as a priority area for their scholarship funding.  That means some of the students in our new cohort are supported through this scholarship scheme – which is then a mechanism for exporting Kiwi energy “know how” offshore.

Access to reliable/affordable electricity is transformative in society.  Most (but not all) New Zealanders can take that their access to grid-connected electricity for granted.  Locally I was part of a team late last year which reflected on the state of the nation (in particular in my section access to clean energy) as part of the Habitat III report to the United Nations.  Sharing ideas and experience via organisations such as the UN is important.  However our postgraduate program is like a mini UN on a daily basis!

 

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