At the end of a workshop I facilitated for the London College of Communication, course leader Adrian Crookes said: "I thought LEGO® Serious Play® was a remarkably adult way of getting together to discuss issues and problems. Meetings using post-it notes and flip charts seem to infantilise by comparison."
I love that comment because it challenges the perception that inevitably comes with a method containing the words "LEGO" and "Play".
What it is
LEGO® Serious Play® is a facilitated thinking, communication and problem-solving method for organisations, teams and individuals. It draws on research from business, organisational development, psychology and learning, and on the idea of "hand knowledge": we often know more than we can say, and building with our hands helps us say it.
Each person builds a model in answer to a question, then tells the story of their model while others listen and ask about it. Because the model holds the meaning, people talk about the model, not about each other, which lowers interpersonal friction.
The beliefs behind it
- Leaders don't have all the answers. Their success depends on hearing every voice in the room.
- People naturally want to contribute, be part of something bigger and take ownership.
- Letting everyone contribute creates more sustainable organisations.
- Teams often work below their potential, leaving knowledge untapped.
- We live in a complex, adaptive world.
Four benefits
- 100% participation. Everyone builds, everyone speaks. Nobody can hide and nobody can dominate.
- Better communication. People think and speak with their hands, eyes and ears, and listen more fully.
- Shared understanding. Individual models combine into a shared model whose meaning the whole group owns.
- Better decisions. System models let a group see and play out the consequences of its choices before making them.
What happens in a session
At a London meet-up on the theme of government, a typical sequence ran like this. After a warm-up tower challenge, each person built their vision of the country in five years' time. The group combined these into a shared vision. Then they built the "agents" that would affect it (education, the collaborative economy, technology, infrastructure, population growth, generation gaps and more) and connected them to the vision as a system.
It looks like child's play. But what other process lets a group model and interrogate a complex system in a few hours? With executive teams we go one step further and play real-time strategy on the system model, as Ravensbourne's trustees did.
Variations we use
User-centred vision. A blank canvas can make visions too abstract. For PCMA, five groups each worked with a persona, such as a PhD researcher attending a conference, and built the experiences that person would have at a conference in the future. The results were grounded and specific.
Serious LEGO movies. For a UK Trade and Investment workshop on doubling exports, groups told the stories of their models to a webcam on a long USB cable, projected live to the room. Ten short films captured the ideas far better than a written summary could.
Is it right for your group?
Not always. We are facilitators of outcomes, and LEGO® Serious Play® is one tool among many. It is at its best for vision, strategy, team identity and complex systems, and with groups who would otherwise talk past each other. Ravensbourne's chairman began sceptical and became one of its strongest advocates.
See LEGO® Serious Play® facilitation, or learn to facilitate it yourself through our sister practice SERIOUSWORK™.
Sean Blair is the founder of ProMeet and Serious Outcomes, an IAF Certified Professional Facilitator and a LEGO® Serious Play® Master Trainer. About Sean.