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Lego® SeriousPlay®

We know much more than we think we know . Tapping into the minds and hearts of participants, using the power of Storytelling and metaphors and ensuring 100% engagement.

 

Learn more about this methodology here.

Click here for: cases and examples.

Workshops with LSP: Services
Lego seriousplay box. Workshop. Duck Challenge.

What is it for?

Think of People and Team development, Innovation and Strategy, Coaching and Counseling.

Lego® Serious Play® is a radical, innovative, experiential method for strategic decision-making and problem-solving in complex environments designed to enhance team development, personal transformation and business performance. Its goal is fostering creative thinking by building experiential metaphors of personal/group identities, aspirations and experiences using Lego® bricks as a catalyst.

A lego dragon with a knight on it surrounded by people. . A metaphor representing someones values.

Why is it so powerful?

Lego® Serious Play® is a lean forward, hands on technique, where everyone plays and enables 100% participation and 100% buy-in, through visual and physical co-creation. It is based on a set of basic principles:

• Everyone has a voice: everyone within a group or an organization can contribute to the discussion and help generate solutions.
• Think with your hands: bypass the biased thinking by “doing” first trusting your hands-brain connection, then reflecting & sharing, in order to enhance understanding and creativity.
• The answer is in the system: leverage complexity through an eco-systemic approach, since no one in the group has the answer to the challenge (neither the facilitator nor the group’s leader).
• There is no ONE right answer: diverge, without boundaries, through different views and perceptions, and then converge to shared values and guiding principles

Lego Serious Play models. Workshop results.

Key theories & concepts

The Lego® Serious Play® method is underpinned by some key theories and
concepts that make it remarkably powerful:

  • The concept of play

  • Storytelling and the use of metaphors, which are both key components of play

  • Constructivism (Piaget, 1936) and its extended version developed by Papert (1986), constructionism. These theories state that learning is more effective when people construct something tangible in the real world.

  • The interconnection between the brain and the hands.

  • The flow model (Csíkszentmihályi, 1975) shows how the mental state of a person engaged in a specific activity can change depending on the challenge level and
    skill level. During a LSP workshop participants often reach the optimal level of engagement when they are in a ‘hands on’ process: this is what Csikszentmihalyi calls ‘flow’.

Facilitator and workshop participant reflecting about the results.

How it works

A Lego® Serious Play® workshop is a structured process where participants are asked to use Lego® bricks to build models representing their thoughts, reflections and ideas.

  • Normally a Lego® Serious Play® workshop is at the same time closely regulated and tailor-made. Trust in the process should always coexist with a strong value and purpose driven facilitation.

  • That’s why the workshop should be led by a certified and experienced facilitator always, who has the task to design the best possible experience together with the sponsor, and then to guide participants through the activities.

A happy workshop participant.

The core process

The CORE PROCESS consists of 4 fundamental steps:

  • POSING A QUESTION: The facilitator gives a specific challenge to all participants.

  • BUILD METAPHORICAL MODELS: Participants build their answer to the challenge using Lego® bricks. While building their models, participants assign a meaning to them and develop a story covering the meaning.

  • SHARING: Participants share their stories with the other participants and listen to the others’ stories.

  • REFLECTION: The facilitator encourages participants to reflect on what they have heard and seen in the models.

Workshops with LSP: Services
Anchor 1

No matter the time available and the size of the group, we have completed wonderful values & visioning sessions, creative brainstorms and impact analysis to support decision making with insights, priorities and focus.


A typical trajectory involves a:

* Quickscan: What are you looking for?

* Strategic Reflection: What will be the key theme depending on your context?

* Tailored design and execution of the Workshop: Let's play

* Summary incl. observations (optional)

* Photography/ Video documentation (optional)

Cases

The kind of questions we have dealt with in the past. 

Impressions

A few additional insights and behind the scenes. 

Typical Workflow

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