Serious Play Forum

[Marcos Cedillo]

Hello All,
I have been requested to design a workshop to “discover” LSP and decide if it is something the company wants to start using or not.
I chose to ask for help and post this question to the community as there is a particular characteristic of some of the people that will take the workshop: they have had an experience before with LSP in a massive event and someone were offering 1.5 hrs free workshops, they took one of those workshops and it was not a good experience, they felt it was just playing with bricks, they did not see the value of the methodology, bottom-line, they do not feel that LSP can provide answers of something tangible to take away and use to make changes in their organization. They just walked away from the workshop with nothing.

I have no idea who hosted that other workshop and I have very little information about what they did… but rather than focusing on what the other facilitator did wrong and make them had a bad experience, I am focusing on how I can demonstrate the most power of LSP in a 4 hrs Workshop to some exceptic audience.
If you have suggestions of activities I can use under this circumstances, I would appreciate if you can share.
Thanks

[Christopher S. Robinson]

Hello Marcus.

It is unfortunate that your colleagues had that experience. Without knowing the circumstances of your company’s team our request to you, I suggest that you not demand a session of 4 hours unless your company has a REAL problem, issue our opportunity that needs exploring. A 1.5 hour sessIon can be very effective at demonstrating the value of LSP for any individual or group if A REAL issue is being explored.

Others have been able to demonstrate the power of LSP with some abstracted issue, however, in light of the fact that your colleagues have been burned by a less than authentic experience you may want to pivot your session around a real issue that isn’t a high risk issue yet is a critical one to the participants.

I’ll send an idea or two to you later tomorrow.

Best regards,
Christopher

Boston,MA

[Marcos Cedillo]

Christopher, thanks for your reply, I agree on the thoughts you shared.
I look forward to your suggestions/ideas. :)

best regards.
Marcos

[Sebastian]

Hi Marcus..
Sorry about the bad experience dilemma you have. Been there and more than once!
Totally agree with Christopher.. whether demo or not the issue being discussed must be Real, Relevant and of Significant Interest to the participants. It does not necessarily have to be work related.. I have had success by posing questions related to Health, Family Life, Corruption and even the English Premier League.!
Another thing I do is a presentation in the beginning on the major users of LSP and what benefit they got out of it.. I spend quite some time on this but it really helps to set their attitude towards the workshop..

[Marcos Cedillo]

Thanks Sebastian, I appreciate the time you guys took to reply. I have been hesitant to talk too much about LSP and its benefits and magic in a “real” workshop, as I rather want the participants to discover it by experience, but in this case I agree it is necessary because of the bad experience that had in the past.
thanks!
Marcos

[Patrizia Bertini]

Marcos,

others said it well and I totally agree with them: make it relevant and useful.

My only additional suggestion is to clarify that a public demo with many participants is not a workshop and that they will experience something very different.

The challenge for the facilitator, aka you, is to take then into the flow quickly.

In my experience the ‘What is this’ is a good way to train them fast in story telling and metaphors, have a good laugh and get them into the flow. But I am sure all facilitators have they preferred exercises that they see helping them to engage people fast and effectively.

Good luck & keep us posted!

[Debbie Hui]

Hi Marcos,

I did a four hours session recently in Hong Kong on a topic regarding business innovation using LSP. My audiences came from different industries background, I used “Real time identity for YOU” as a base (not all) and I found “reflection” (one of the core processes) is very important for participants to experience and understand value and power of LSP.

I will ask my customers problem or core issue they would like to highlight beforehand, so that I could review and raise relevant questions during reflection time. Hope it will help you.

Wish you success in the coming session.

[Marko Rillo]

Marcos, thank you for this interesting question and thanks to the others for your contribution.

I presume that we have all been asked this a number of times. A decision maker who would like to see a proof that LEGO SERIOUS PLAY “actually works”.

I have used a number of examples from my practice. I was lucky that one of my first experiences was working with a group of senior executives of an organization who had worked side by side for years and knew each other so well that they could tell almost verbatim what the other person next to them was about to say.

However, at the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY session it turned out that their buildings relied in different metaphors and turned out looking at the problem from a completely different angle. Some participants had several completely innovative insights about their business that they never had shared verbally prior to the event. It was a great eye opener what was hidden in their colleagues whom they thought they knew so well and a great proof of what a method can achieve.

I guess that the trick for you is to see how to pose the question and lead the process in an observant manner to make sure that those hidden gems would be revealed during the LSP session. I gather that for you the main challenge is to try to make sure that this type of eye-opener would be included in this “taster” session.

For this to happen, let me suggest a few things:
– First, try to make sure that the group would be manageable, preferably 4-6 persons, not more.
– Discuss with them – if you could identify with them a topic for discussion where they currently do NOT have a ready answer. It is the best potential source to identify “known unknowns”, which is where LEGO SERIOUS PLAY usually proves to be the most valuable.

But lets pass the baton to the other members of the community – what other kind of examples have you used when you have been asked to “prove” that the method really works? :)

[Marcos Cedillo]

Thank you Marko, Debbie, Patrizia, Sebastian and Christopher!!

all your comments were useful for me, let me tell you that the session last month went great!
They were 10 participants and half of them knew each other and the other half didn’t (even though they work in same company). I went through the classic warm up, and included in my workshop design activities to bring out of them the current state of the company and then they built the future aspiration for end of 2015. The interesting part was all the discussions around both models and how they could accomplish goals for 2015 they have defined themselves. After the workshop was finished, I asked the leader if the experience changed his idea about LSP and he said, definitely yes… before today I wouldn’t have payed for a business workshop with Lego, now I would pay, I see now value.
Thanks all for your comments when I posted the question, and I am sorry It took me a month to let you guys know how it went.
Saludos!
Marcos

[Marko Rillo]

Thumbs up and thanks for sharing, Marcos – good to know that your event went well! :)

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