Building a shared understanding
When a challenge is complex. Or everyone has a different opinion or perspective. LEGO® Serious Play (LSP) helps to build a shared understanding. LEGO® Serious Play provides a framework to build on our problems and challenges. It is a science-based method that anyone can participate in if they are willing to try. And it is not just kids play. Serious and complex topics take center stage in LSP workshops.
By using individual building exercises, participants build individual visions of the problem. They share their builds and ask questions to understand the other perspectives. After everyone has had an equal opportunity to contribute, the participants create a shared model. Every participant (and their ideas) is represented in the shared model. So this method is great to create support for the shared solution/vision/team setup.
One of the misconceptions of LSP is that you need to be excellent at building with LEGO. I mean, how else can you make a model of a new business concept? But it is not about the aesthetics and more about the meaning the builder gives to the model. There are no literal builds in LSP, we use metaphors to convey meaning. A fox can for example mean a sly and cunning competitor. And skeletons in closets can represent malpractices. For some, this may sound complex or vague. For this, each workshop starts with skills building. An hour to help participants build their LSP skills. This allows them to be able to build and give meaning throughout the workshop.
LEGO® Serious Play is applicable for Enterprise, Team, and Personal Development. All kinds of large, medium, and small companies, government, and nonprofit organizations make use of it.
5 Examples of challenges/problems that LEGO® Serious Play has helped solve.
1. Future scenarios
Play out your future vision and various possible scenarios. From a spending stop to stock crashes and from climate change to leadership change. You play out the effects of these scenarios and create a future vision with its feet planted in reality. Every participant contributes to new knowledge about possible futures for the company. The group learns about the impact of various scenarios and creates solutions.
2. Strategic partnership development
Create the entire stakeholder landscape for your company. See where the hidden potential lies and barriers to possible partnerships. Create new connections and let it play out how these would affect your business. You end up with an overview of the way the partnerships can develop into a win-win situation.
3. Business model development (for start-up)
Build the landscape for the start-up. See where the potential lies, where the gaps are, and where the impact is. Build the business model including the target groups, key partners, and money flow. Get everybody on the same page. This can be a challenge in start-ups because the business is often still so fluid and flexible.
4. Concept development
Brainstorming is a great focus for LSP. For example, creating a new offer for a different target group. Or coming up with many ways to use new technology. LSP is not used to build the actual product. But to create a landscape of ideas and develop them into bigger models. These models represent the various values, features, users, and market potential. The overview created helps to make decisions on the innovation calendar. It gives guidance in what to develop next.
5. (Virtual) team communication improvement
Every team member builds their role and adds the difficulties they face and where they need help. Building the connections between the various roles shows the interdependencies. Together the team solves the gaps by building better connections. This results in a team model that shows the various communication methods the team (will) use. All team members know their role and are sensitive to the dependencies other have.
Ignite Innovation used LSP to align growth expectations and sales efforts. We consolidated the results into 7 guiding principles that still apply to how we run our business. There are many more applications and each challenge requires a made-to-measure workshop.
Are you interested in a workshop?
Are you interested in organizing a LEGO® Serious Play workshop? Please contact Laurie Scholten (laurie@igniteinnovation.nl) to discuss workshop options for your challenge. Or plan a meeting in our Calendly.