Serious Play Forum

[Gabriel]

Has anyone used LSP to help in sector specialization strategy? It turns out that a client of mine, in the small business banking sector, is looking for support to go from being a sector agnostic bank to sector focused bank. For this they have asked me to facilitate a 4-hour workshop with LSP with the goal of determining the best approach to become sector focused or specialized. Any thoughts?

Thank you.
Gabriel

[Marko Rillo]

Gabriel – that is very interesting assignment you have been invited to assist. It goes beyond the core application of LEGO SERIOUS PLAY in trying to take steps in determining particular strategic choices for the firm. Hence – I see two potential scenarios for you.

One possibility is to frame the approach by using the Business Model Canvas framework . Namely – to redefine a strategy from a generic bank into a niche player implies a number of activities the company would have to start differently in their value offering. You may therefore focus your discussion on how the value proposition is going to change from A to B.

Alternatively – as your resource as the facilitator lies within the questions and the answers lie within the group of participants. Hence – given that you have just 4 hours, I would suggest you not to over-think the situation, but to simply trust the method and specify the question exactly as you have described here. You first do skills building and thereafter suggest two questions. 1) “Please use LEGO SERIOUS PLAY to describe your current situation and point out to the main problems that you are facing as a generic bank.” 2) Please use LEGO bricks to describe your future state as niche bank.

Any other ideas?

[Gabriel]

Marko

thanks for your reply and thoughts. The key word here is approach.

In fact my client is not so much looking at the workshop to help develop a sector strategy per say, but to think of the best approach or framework or mechanism, under which one or more sector strategies can be developed.

This stems from the fact that many of my clients employees have adopted their own “approach” to supporting certain industries or sectors – on an adhoc basis.My client would like to adopt a more uniform company-wide approach instead. This is, in a way, to get every stakeholder aligned and to use a standard format, if you wish, and avoid group to work in silos.

For this I would go with your second scenario. What do you think?

[Marko Rillo]

Probably yes, because what you would need in this situation is probably quite extensive exchange on those ad hoc individual approaches that those individual employees have taken so far.

The main concern that I would have – is the time enough for this type of discussion given lots of diverging thoughts about the sector directions among the employees? This sounds like a session of 1-2 days rather than 4 hours? Of course it depends on the size of the group and the actual number of those diverging approaches?

[Gabriel]

That’s my concern as well Marko. In fact when they first asked me to do this, I was immediately thinking of 1 day. When I mentioned this they frowned! On top of that the group will be composed of about 20 people.

Since I am new at this and this would be only my second workshop, what arguments can you suggest I use to convince them otherwise? Or what is it that we can accomplish in 4 hours?

Thanks again Marko for your follow-ups

[Marko Rillo]

The best you can do at this stage is some meticulous planning. Start from the very first minutes and write down all steps that you are planning:
– Introduction to the day by company representative (15-20 minutes)
– Introduction by you to LSP methodology, rules etc (10-15 min)
– Warm up skills building exercises (20-25 min)
– First individual building session (5-7 min)
– Tell a story – individual reflection of the first individual building session by 20 people – what are current diverging practices (20×3-4 minutes each = 60-80 min)
– Summary wrap-up story of the first session (10 min)
– Group story – building landscape to summarise the first discussion of diverging practices (25-35 min)
– Wrap-up of the group landscape (10 min)
– Second individual building session – choice of the niche (5-7 min)
– etc.
– …

When you outline the detailed steps that you are about to take you should still consider additional 20-30 minute buffer because some people take longer to tell their story etc. As a result you should have a provisional layout for your day.

[Bruce Scharlau]

Gabriel

I agree with what Marko has said and would only add two comments:

First, the firm probably doesn’t appreciate how useful LSP can be, and that is why they only gave you 4 hours.

Second, as they don’the know how useful this will be make sure they go away with ‘actions’ to implement and a subtle note of how you would take this further with LSP at a later date. This doesn’t have to be a one-off event and you want to leave the door open.

Good luck and play well!

[Gabriel]

Marko thank you very much for your input… this helps me tremendously. I will compare your planning with mine and make proper adjustments. Maybe the planning just might convince them to take one day. In fact I am meeting with the team leader tomorrow to work on the planning.

Bruce, your second point is quite valid, in fact when I told my client that 4 hours may not be sufficient, they told me that there’s no reason why we could not do another session. So this just might happen. The key, as you eloquently put it will be to “make sure they go away with actions to implement”

Thank you both very much.

[Balint]

Hi Gabriel,

Suggestion of Bruce worked me just fine. Few weeks ago I was in similar situation like You, just different topic. My client reduced the time from 6 to less than 3hours, which was clearly not enough. What I did was kind of a show-off, I pointed out during the workshop what a longer facilitation can do, and why it would be useful…etc. In the end my client really liked the facilitation and understood the strenght of the method. Now we are planning a second one and a longer cooperation.

Good luck!

[Marcos Cedillo]

Gabriel, my two cents…
You mentioned the group was going to be 20 participants, I would do one of these 2 scenarios:
1- Split the group in half and have 2 separate sessions.
2- Have them all together in the room but use a facilitator assistant so you can have 2 tables of 10 working at the same time, you give one general instruction or “Challenge” and the two tables work separately on the construction and storytelling. this will save you time and gives you more control, not to mention the experience of the people will be best in groups of ten rather than 20.
regards.
Marcos

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