From healthy scepticism to shared ambition

The challenge

Ravensbourne is a London university-sector college in digital media and design, with courses spanning fashion, broadcasting, interactive product design, architecture, graphic design, animation and sound design. Its trustees and senior executives wanted to discuss vision and strategy together.

The overarching objective was simple: "To establish shared ambition and direction for Ravensbourne."

What we did

We chose LEGO® Serious Play® as the primary tool and designed an eight-step process:

1. Learn the method. Building skills, using bricks as metaphors, telling stories and listening with eyes and ears.
2. Model identity. The core identity that makes Ravensbourne uniquely Ravensbourne, how others see it, and what trustees and executives aspired for it to become. One participant's model of how others saw the college: a yellow flower, "good", on a large blue baseplate, "but insignificant".
3. Build a shared identity model. Participants retold the story of the shared model until they truly shared its meaning.
4. Model the agents. The factors and forces that could affect the vision.
5. Create a system model connecting the agents to each other and to the vision.
6. Identify scenarios that were probable or possible.
7. Play real-time strategy on the system model, to understand risks, consequences and why the group made the decisions it did.
8. Agree simple guiding principles, then plan actions and share learning.

What the chairman said

"I confess that when you and I first met I wasn't immediately sure that Lego Serious Play would be the right tool for our team. You quickly gained my trust and I'm absolutely delighted that, having listened carefully to what we wanted to achieve, you made such persuasive arguments for the approach."
Jonathan Drori CBE, Chairman, Ravensbourne Board of Governors

Results

• A shared identity model, told as one story
• A system model of the agents acting on the vision
• Scenarios explored through real-time strategy
• Simple guiding principles for future decisions