How is stacking knives on marshmallows corporate development and learning?

By having people do something (not too scary or different) that appears to be novel or unique may be a sufficient change to break their “stuckness in thinking” or the existing patterns of behavior the team exhibits. Once we can shift behavior patterns people sometimes see better, novel, more innovative ways of doing their work.

Mike Cardus Team Building Interview on NPR

Many of the team building activities in the article are bad and funny. I would argue that most of them are bad managers trying hard to do what they think is right. Unfortunately bad management can be tough to fix … and team building can be abused.