Inspiration through Lego
Whether it’s assessing innovations or discussing the new corporate strategy, there comes a time when people want to describe their ideas about the future and convince others of them. Overloaded PowerPoint slides and complex mountains of figures are not a satisfactory means of doing this, as most people probably know from their own experience. Conviction always arises when there is a compelling story that everyone involved can imagine.
This is where a method called LEGO Serious Play works well. LEGO Serious Play was developed from 1996 onwards at the suggestion of Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the main owner of LEGO A/S at the time. At the time, Kristiansen needed an effective process for innovative strategy development for his company and was dissatisfied with conventional strategy development methods. Together with two professors, Johan Roos and Bart Victor, and Robert Rasmussen, then head of product development for LEGO Education, he then gave the go-ahead for a method that has been developed over 20 years into the effective tool it is today.
How does Lego Serious Play (LSP) work? In a playful way, entire process sequences are recreated and acted out with LSP. Often, it is only then that the actual strengths but also the decisive weaknesses of an idea become apparent. The combination of play and storytelling makes it much easier to get people excited about a project idea.
It is exciting to see how the activity of the participants increases as soon as the Lego bricks are on the table. The majority of people associate Lego bricks with childhood memories and immediately start in “building mode”, regardless of hierarchy or background. In the meantime, I have conducted workshops with the method in many parts of the world and had very similar experiences here.
In principle, the process is always the same: The participants build their idea of the process/product/strategy with Lego bricks and then explain the model with a story. The others listen with interest and then present their own version. Afterwards, a joint model is built and the ideas of the individual participants are integrated.
What sounds like a quick round at first glance can actually take 1-2 days (depending on the complexity of the topic) and involves a lot of fun, but also intensive (and exhausting) work phases. It is always important to moderate the process properly so that the focus is on the progress of the project. More about the Serious Play method can be found on the Lego website: https://www.lego.com/en-us/seriousplay.
How can you use Lego for your team?
With inspiring greetings,
Christian Buchholz
