Luke Battye from http://seriousplayworkshops.co.uk has written the following blog post.
LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is an incredibly strong tool to use when defining a vision. It can help clarify ideas and concepts for teams, helping develop them into something beneficial for the whole team.LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® helps define a vision and make it a reality.
How LEGO helps is a three fold process.
The first of these is the search for purpose.LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, also known as LSP, is a fantastic way to explore complex or multifaceted ideas where there aren’t always clear answers or solutions. If there is a need to grasp the bigger picture, see connections, or answers then LSP allows for physical visualisation of potential problems. This can help with the connectivity of different aspects to a problem to help find purpose or achieve its effect. No problem is too large or too small to be solved using LSP as a constructivist method.
LSP helps unite different demographics of co-worker towards a unified goal.
The second is when looking at an actual problem. LSP can be used as a tool for clarification. Although this may sound similar to the point above, there is one distinction. In once case we are talking about clarification for the team. In the other case it is the clarification of the project itself.
Why Use LSP To Define A Vision
LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is a fantastic tool for defining a vision. How does it work? The answer is simple –
Start leaning in. A beautiful thing happens when every person in a team is engaged in solving the same problem. People lean in, rather than lean back as so often happens in a traditional meeting. This is the unrecognisable signature of a LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® workshop and is the hallmark of people applying both left and right sides of the brain to tackle a problem.
Avoid group think. In most meetings 80% of the talking is done by 20% of the people in the room. Sometimes this is appropriate but sometimes it means you only get value out of 20% of the room. LSP’s core process means that every person in the room, contributes all of the time to addressing the goal of the meeting. This leads to more engagement, more commitment and better collective problem solving.
Learn by doing. Help teams articulate their ideas in 3D, a much richer more visual way that leads to deeper understanding of concepts, both individually and as a group.
Ignite powerful conversations. There’s a remarkable thing that happens when you ask someone to build what they’re thinking. For reasons we’re yet to fully understand, it’s almost impossible to hide your true thoughts in an LSP session. The bricks depersonalise the issues being discussed and this leads to much deeper, richer, more powerful conversations where people feel comfortable discussing the real issues that need to be surfaced to achieve the goal.
Create shared vision. When a team shares an experience like LSP, which can be bother exhilarating and exhausting, they develop a far deeper sense of connection to one another and the challenge being addressed. This means that post-workshop commitment to actions is extremely strong, as is their continuing understanding of the issue, solutions and desired outcomes.
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