I recently learned about a business exercise called the Marshmallow Challenge. It was created by designer Peter Skillman as a way to explore how teams solve problems.

It is simple enough. Divide people into teams of four, hand them a handful of spaghetti sticks, a roll of tape, and a single marshmallow. Then give them eighteen minutes to build the tallest free-standing structure they can, with the marshmallow perched proudly on top.

This challenge has been repeated tens of thousands of times in conference rooms, classrooms, and retreats across the world. You might expect the tallest towers to come from engineers or business school graduates. After all, they are trained to solve problems.

But no. Over and over, one group leaves the rest of us in the dust: kindergarteners.

While the MBAs spend the first chunk of time deciding who is in charge and then the rest of it carefully designing the perfect plan, they do not touch the marshmallow until the final moments. Then they watch the whole thing topple when its surprising weight sinks the structure.

Kindergarteners are different. They slap that marshmallow on the spaghetti from the start, giggling when it falls over, trying again without a second thought. They build, test, laugh, rebuild, test again, until they have something that works.

And here is the part I love. Kindergarteners even outperform CEOs. The corner office does not always mean the tallest tower.

There is something here for us.

When did we trade the joy of discovery for the weight of perfection? Somewhere between kindergarten and the corner office, we stopped playing and started performing. We forgot that trying and failing is not a setback. It is the process. We forgot that the best work does not come from grim determination alone, but from hearts lightened by joy.

Joy does not ignore the challenge. It refuses to let the challenge steal the smile. Joy experiments. Joy laughs at toppled towers and rolls up its sleeves for another try.

The book of Nehemiah says it best:

“The joy of the Lord is your strength.” — Nehemiah 8:10

Strength does not come only from skill, resources, or careful plans. It springs from joy. And maybe, just maybe, if we worked with that kind of joy, we would find our towers taller, our teams stronger, and our hearts lighter.