Chapter 11 LEGO®
This chapter is devoted to giving you actual case stories from a variety of industries and nonprofit organizations as well as government. We will share with you the insights we have accumulated over a 12-year period. We begin by giving you four bird's-eye lenses of how organizations have applied the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY method to develop their business, teams, and people. We will then present a number of actual cases and finish with some comments about the misconceptions regarding the application of LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, which we hope to dispel with this book.
The overarching goal for all applications is to build better businesses, better teams, and more competent individuals. In Part I, we described the need for going beyond 20/80, unlocking new knowledge, and breaking habitual thinking—a process shown in the diagram in Figure 11.1 .
Figure 11.1 Three Good Reasons for Using LEGO SERIOUS PLAY
As mentioned, these may not be new needs for businesses. However, for competitive reasons and due to increasingly fickle yet sophisticated client and employee
We can see these two kinds of interactions at odds in the photos in Figure 11.2 . To the left, a typical situation in a workshop with LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, participants are all active; they are leaning in and contributing. On the right side, the often seen and more unfortunate normal meeting, one person is at the front of the room, next to the flip chart and with good control of the marker. The other participants in the meeting are leaning out, they are passive, and there may be even be a good chance that they are bored.
Figure 11.2 To the Left a Lean Forward Meeting; To the Right a Lean Backward Meeting
With the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY approach, the results are “lean forward meetings.” This means more participation, more insights, more knowledge, more engagement, and, ultimately, more commitment and faster implementation.
Figure 11.3 ).
Figure 11.3 Enterprise, Team, or Personal Development
Some examples of personal development include coaching, conflict resolution, career planning, feedback for understanding of identity, and peer review conversations.
Team development is much more than team building: its goal is to directly address issues employees must tackle to make their team better and more effective. Consequently, it focuses on team members' identities and the team's visions, goals, strengths, responsibilities, processes, culture, and spirit, as well as strategies for improving performance.
Enterprise development covers all LEGO SERIOUS PLAY applications that are not specifically focused on team or personal development. Popular applications include organizational, business, and product development, as well as strategic planning, innovation, change and change management, mergers and acquisitions, education, and research. The hierarchy in terms of ordering and overlap in the model has a meaning. Enterprise development overlaps the other two ovals, followed by team development, with personal development in the background. The layering indicates that enterprise development is what the method is most often used for, but due to the
One way of describing what we mean by complexity is that dealing with the challenge involves multiple stakeholders operating in a dynamic environment with a certain level of unpredictability. It is therefore impossible to move from A to B in a straight line, illustrated in Figure 11.4 as path 1 from A to B. We also referred to this in Chapter 4.
Figure 11.4 Different Ways of Getting from A to B
The organizations and managers who embark upon using the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY method often experience this challenge. It's not long before they find that trying to deal with complex challenges based on the assumption that you can make a detailed plan for getting from A to B in a straight and predictable line leads to a journey similar to the one in path 2, and not the intended journey in path 1. Their arrows end up pointing in all different directions; therefore, travelling on path 2 often means that the organization never arrives at the desired end state of B.
What is even worse is that some organizations try to adjust for this by outlining a new plan for going on a journey akin to path 1, but that rarely ends in success. And according to some, it falls under the very definition of madness: doing the same thing several times and expecting different outcomes. Instead of doing this, a group of
There are trained LEGO SERIOUS PLAY facilitators and users in almost every corner of the world and in any kind of industry. The methodology works well within and across cultures, and it has been used on all continents, from an electronic giant in Tokyo, a big consultancy in the United States, a hospice in Copenhagen, and an NGO in Myanmar to organic farmers in New Zealand and small cattle holders in East Timor.
Often, the differences among people—due to factors like position, age, language, culture, education, competences, and background—can become obstacles for a group's ability to work together effectively to develop their business. Experience shows that the method not only transcends these differences or boundaries; the method also has the ability to turn this diversity into a benefit for the group.
If we look at which industries and organizations have used LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, we see a similar picture. It appeals to a broad range of industries and to large as well as small companies. It appeals to for-profit corporations, nonprofit organizations, and government institutions. We also find many users within the field of higher education.
This section covers a number of diverse interventions with LEGO SERIOUS PLAY. Some we have designed and facilitated ourselves; others have been designed and delivered by facilitators we have trained and certified. Table 11.1 shows an overview of the examples and indicates their placing, either by chapter number or by case example number.
Table 11.1
Large Companies
Small and Medium-Sized Companies
Government Organizations
Nonprofit Organizations
Enterprise Development Pharmaceutical Company Building a New Manufacturing Site (#1)
Architectural Firm Ownership Transition (#4)
Future Scenarios in a Government Department (#6)
Strategic Partnership Development (#8)
Team Development Building a Transformational Leadership Team at a Global Service Center (#9)
Improving Communications in a Virtual Team (#11)
Team Workshop at an Embassy (#12)
Becoming the Best Possible Leadership Team at a Nursing Home (#13)
Personal Development Developing Strategic Thinking Capabilities (#14)
Talent Development at a Medium-Sized Pharmaceutical Company (#16)
Refocus to Reenter the Labor Force (#17)
Muscular Dystrophy Association: Defining the Good Life (#18)
Case Example 1:
Background: An international pharmaceutical company headquartered in Scandinavia planned to construct a new $200 million manufacturing facility in South America. It would be its largest ever—two to three times the size of its current facility. In addition, the company was going to have to build the facility faster than anything it had previously built.
Issue: Challenges included (1) developing a shared strategy for leaders who would be relocated with their families for a period of two to three years to oversee the project, (2) bringing the leaders together as a team on both personal and professional levels, and (3) integrating headquarters goals with the knowledge and insight of the South American team members.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: The solution was a two-day strategy workshop for a group consisting of employees from the headquarters, the leaders to be relocated, and local leaders from the South American plant. The workshop was delivered by two facilitators.
Outcome: LEGO SERIOUS PLAY made it possible for the participants to see and understand the project's systemwide impact. This allowed team members to identify potential problem areas that were not obvious to them before the workshop. As a result, the plant was finished on time and within budget. In addition, one area they hadn't considered before engaging in the workshop involved practical concerns about how families would adjust to living abroad. In prior transitions like this one, many spouses became unhappy. So the company used LEGO SERIOUS PLAY once again with the families—and thanks to this, relocated families have happily adjusted to their new homes and have made many new friends.
Case Example 2:
Background: The company is a well-known multinational corporation (MNC) present globally in a number of industries with over 100,000 employees, upwards of 300 production sites, and more than €60 billion in annual sales.
Issue: The organization was undergoing a change process: specifically, it wanted to help its engineers and strategic business unit (SBU) leaders to focus less on their products' features and more on the value delivered to the client. Traditionally, the company had delivered excellent products, thereby encouraging a strong engineering culture rather than a customer-focused culture in most units.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: The workshops were tied into part of a larger process. Each lasted one day and included participants from the SBU management team and/or leading engineers. The participants built models of the SBU organizational identity followed by a landscape with models of the customer needs (i.e., Application Technique 3). The workshop concluded with developing a shared model telling the story of the value proposition.
Outcome: The groups left with the LEGO model, the recording of the story, and a first version of the value proposition in writing. This helped fuel the transition from a focus on features to value delivered.
Case Example 3:
Background: In October 2011, Hitachi Electronics Services Co., Ltd and Hitachi Information Systems, Ltd merged to become one information technology (IT) services company known as Hitachi Systems, Ltd. A project team that consisted of members from the two previous firms was established immediately. This group's primary objective was to alter the concept they had used previously at their main office in Mita, Japan—a traditional showroom—and move toward a new “integration space” at Osaki. The new setup would allow customers and employees to hold meetings, seminars, and other events in more open and comfortable environments.
Issue: The team had to implement the concept by the summer of 2012. If they pulled off the development process well, it would become a symbol of the success of teamwork for members from two different firms. The project team members wanted to accelerate the project and also make their concept more obvious: to have a clearer image of the identity of the space, and to express how it was going to surprise and impress people.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: A one-day workshop for a team of 12 to 15 people was conducted in Tokyo. Two facilitators split the team into three groups. Each participant created a room space identity model to convey his or her understanding of the meaning of impressive and surprised ; they then collected and told stories of “the integration room of the future” by integrating the defined models. Each group made a presentation of the future space concept, identifying
Outcome: The new integrated space opened in the summer of 2012, and its success can be attributed to the feedback from the project. As expressed by one of the project managers: “The workshops gave us the ideas and key words [we needed] to develop into two concrete concepts in order to pass our ideas to our contractors-designers. The project team members from the two original entities also showed more respect toward each other during the session and [gave one another equal time to] express their ideas. Despite [the fact that we] came from two different [companies], we were able to commit to the outcome and implement the overall concepts [we gleaned] from the workshop.”
Case Example 4:
Background: The founders of a large U.S.-based architectural firm had passed the reins over to two senior architects who had been groomed to lead the firm.
Issue: The new leaders could see that shifting market demand and increased competition would require a radical change in the firm culture. In the past, the now-retired founders had been responsible for getting new clients, leading project design, and managing the firm. The new leaders envisioned a culture of market-focused shared leadership.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: Together with the new leaders, the facilitator designed a one-day workshop to unearth the skeletons in the closet—that is, to distinguish the current firm from the cultural rules the founders had established. They were also seeking to help develop nine emerging leaders, and to begin to design and implement a market-focused culture of shared leadership.
Outcome: The workshop helped all participants to see each other in a new light. The two sponsors were able to assess their nine emerging leaders' interests and motivations, and the leaders themselves were able to form new bonds and also play an integral part in shaping the firm's future direction. The collective aspirations voiced during this workshop became the foundation for firm planning goals. During the workshop, employees formed subcommittees for each of four areas of focus—design, technology, marketing, and finance. These four committees became internal designers and advocates for change, allowing workshop participants to become stakeholders in the changes they designed together.
Case Example 5:
Background: This is a family-owned European Internet retailer working in three countries that operates under several brand names in these various countries. The company has grown significantly over the past couple of years, partly organically and partly through acquisitions. It sells mostly refrigerators, freezers, and electronics.
Issue: The board, consisting mostly of non–family members, had set a simple yet demanding goal for the company: within five years, double the top line and the bottom line. After receiving this directive, the CEO/owner and COO decided to contact the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY facilitators.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: The entire process ran over six months with three separate two-day strategy workshops involving the following steps:
Interviews were conducted with a number of employees from various levels of the organization.
An initial workshop was held in the company's home country involving participants who were members of corporate top management and local upper-level managers.
Second and third workshops took place with the daughter companies; participants here were members from corporate management and country management.
Each workshop followed the same design: the participants built model(s) showcasing the company's current situation, the strategic landscape (clients and other stakeholders and the connections between them), the aspiration for what the company could become, and what the focus areas should be.
The COO and CMO formed a task force using the facilitators as sparring partners, where they compiled, compared, and rated focus areas, which they later quantified and analyzed. They eventually decided to concentrate on a subset of these areas, which they elaborated further.
Finally, they gave a presentation to the board. The task force and one of the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY facilitators presented the process and results to the board, and it was decided to prioritize three of the focus areas.
Outcome: The strategy is going into the second year, and the company is well on its way to fulfilling the targets. As a kickoff to the second year, a one-day ideation workshop (not LEGO SERIOUS PLAY) was conducted in order to come up with short-term activities that could support the focus areas.
Case Example 6:
Background: The department, part of the Ministry of Social Affairs in a European country, was tasked with working in a highly polarized area that frequently commanded the general public's attention.
Issue: Due to the department's task and foreseeable challenges from elected politicians from both sides of parliament, the department wanted to create a sense of a burning platform and a strong set of actions. They wanted have a clear understanding of core values and how they could be more adaptive and resilient for the future.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: The LEGO SERIOUS PLAY facilitator designed a two-day workshop based on scenario thinking as described by Kees van der Heijden and Adam Kahane (also mentioned in Chapter 3 as an example of play). The participants' objective was to build the department's core values and envision what it could become. From that they moved through creating model of possible yet extreme futures. In order to prepare themselves to create these, they first built models of driving forces—defined as underlying and typically unpredictable forces that shape the surrounding world and that impact the observable trends, for example the degree of centralization—and then ranked these according to impact and predictability.
Outcome: Imagining and building these extreme yet possible futures helped the department develop a set of actions that created a robust strategy framework. This, along with the clear articulation of the department's core purpose and vision, kept it focused on delivering value to a number of vulnerable or marginalized groups. The department secured its further survival and is still playing an important role in the welfare of special groups.
Case Example 7:
Background: ICEMAR, a project established to monitor ice movement in Arctic waters, delivers existing sea ice information products directly to vessels operating in icy waters, and sought to ensure the sustainability of the service in the long term.
A consortium of partners from six different countries and composed of private companies and public service providers led by Kongsberg Satellite Services AS (KSAT), a Norwegian satellite services company and the world-leading company for maritime monitoring and surveillance systems, was tasked with developing ICEMAR as an integrated solution to increase the availability of ice information data on board vessels navigating near or in ice-infested waters in the European Arctic and the Baltic Sea.
Issue: The first phase of this project—funded by the European Union and with a very short time frame—was to develop and demonstrate a pilot sea ice information distribution system. The consortium members came from different countries and both private and public organizational cultures. They represented meteorological centers, software developers, and telecommunications and satellite image providers, among others.
KSAT assembled a project team of 15 people representing all members of the consortium to lead the development. They faced several challenges: very few of the members knew each other, only a handful were even aware of what the project was about, the task was complex with no precedents, the commercial interest varied among the consortium members, and there was an urgent need to get going with the actual work in order to meet the funding deadlines.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: The project work began with a two-day workshop of which a day and a half were spent with LEGO SERIOUS PLAY. The goals of the workshop were to build a shared understanding of the nature and content of ICEMAR, to identify and prioritize the issues that the team needed to undertake in the first phase, and to create a positive spirit for the upcoming development.
Outcome: Over the course of the a day and a half, the team managed to accomplish the following:
Define and specify the ICEMAR project content and create a shared vision that would serve as the guiding star from that day until the project was completed.
Identify the scope of technical issues and process challenges the team would need to manage in both the short term and the long term, including prioritization.
Transform from a group of individuals with different degrees of interest in the project to a team of dedicated and motivated experts working toward a common goal.
At this point in time, the project has been successfully completed, and the results live up to the outcome of the workshop.
Case Example 8:
Background: FIRST is an international nonprofit organization, headquartered in Manchester, New Hampshire, with a mission to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills; inspire innovation; and foster well-rounded life capabilities, including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.
One program inspires younger students aged 9 to 16 (9 to 14 in the United States/Canada and Mexico) to solve real-world engineering challenges by building robots to complete tasks on a thematic playing surface and to complete a research project. The teams, guided by their imaginations and adult coaches worldwide, discover exciting career possibilities and, through the process, learn to make positive contributions to society.
A major partner in this program is the robots manufacturer since the availability of the educational robots in the classroom is a necessity for the program events, which in turn are essential for attracting a corporate sponsor to finance the events.
Issue: Due to a much higher interest worldwide for participating in the programs offered by FIRST 's distribution strategy, the organization had become a bottleneck for its own further growth as of 2008. It had begun with a limited scope, which had made it easy to maintain quality with the small team responsible for all aspects of both design and delivery. At that time, the setup was highly local and therefore not scalable for a global reach, which was the partnership's goal. This had resulted in a more overall strategic discussion about the long-term aspiration
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: A one-day workshop with participants from FIRST and the partner was designed to achieve the following four goals:
Feel the pulse for the program partnership. Is it just fine, too hard, too rapid—or something else? Additionally, determine if there is a need for going to the doctor and prescribing some medicine.
Identify the essence of a program event regardless of where in the world it takes place.
Develop a clear picture of the shared expectations for the next three to five years.
Identify steps to implement the outcome of the workshop.
Outcome: The workshop fully met the goals set—and for the first time ever, both parties in the partnership fully understood and appreciated each other's positions. It turned out that their aspirations for the future growth and how to change to a more scalable distribution strategy were much more aligned than anyone had imagined was the case. As a result, the workshop revitalized the partnership and became the starting point for a new era—one in which the program grew from being local to being global in reach.
Case Example 9:
Background: The client was a global network and communications company with three global service centers that support the entire organization. The center in Mexico City had been formed three years prior to our meeting with them, and had grown from 100 to 3,000 employees in that time.
Issue: The center was moving from providing bespoke to more standardized solutions. Management had realized, in the words of the center's top manager: “What drove us to grow will not keep us growing. We now have scale; next, we need to bring the value to organization, and that needs to come through a transformation—an industrialization of our services.”
The purpose became to build a leadership team that could create and carry out transformation.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: A one-day workshop was held with the leadership team, a total of 13 people with very diverse backgrounds and from different countries in Latin America. The participants started with building models of themselves, exploring their values, leadership strengths, and competencies. From this they moved on to exploring what characterized the team as a whole, the hurdles to transformation, and a vision for what they could become. The workshop closed with a reflection in which they moved backward from the vision to the current situation and identified initiatives in that process.
Outcome: The team developed a vision for themselves that included defining good leadership. Having defined hurdles to the transformation (e.g., lack of resources and employees wedded to the current status), and having identified what each them could bring out in themselves that would accelerate that transformation, they used this insight to kick off a robust transformation process.
Case Example 10:
Background: The Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation plc (ENRC) integrates mining, processing, energy, logistics, and marketing operations. It originated as part of the privatization process in Kazakhstan in 1994, and in its present form was established in 2006 with headquarters in London. Its ferro-alloys global marketing team has its base in Zurich, but members are based in several locations in the Euro-Asian region. Because ENRC works with clients all over the world, it felt the implications of the recent global financial crisis. The year 2012 was especially challenging, according to Alex Tattersall, then ENRC's marketing director of ferro-alloys, who needed to align his team on common aims for 2013. They had developed corporate strategy; what they needed from employees were alignment and focus.
Issue: Tattersall, who has since left ENRC, wanted to start 2013 on a new and positive note by bringing his team together and on task in an environment of open dialogue. He wanted a process that could run his team through the business in a new way; therefore, he assigned two LEGO SERIOUS PLAY facilitators to do a one-day workshop with this purpose. As Tattersall explained, “We have a core team in sales as well as supporting functions such as human resources, IT, compliance, and quality assurance units. I wanted to create an alignment of the team—to make us think in the same way, to be better in terms of strategic clarity, communication with production plants, and leadership.”
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: A one-day workshop for a team of 15 people was developed. The workshop was held off-site in a beautiful location in
Outcome: During the workshop, it became obvious to Alex Tattersall and his team that they had lacked clarity. The diversity of ENRC's operations had limited communication within the sales team. The workshop served to bring everyone together physically—and from there, they were able to come to a common awareness of where they most required improvement. By the end of the day, they had developed a shared vision of what the team should look like by the end of 2013—and thus, what kind of team it would take to execute the corporate strategy.
“Making everything concrete in the LEGO brick models created a relaxed atmosphere and made ‘all noses point in the same direction,’” explains Alex. “I can honestly say that in this case the workshop itself was the benefit—no more, no less.” He concluded: “We had fun while doing something serious.”
Case Example 11:
Background: A medium-sized global communications technology company had organized its reverse logistic processes around three remote centers, all located in North America. The dispersed team—who got together only twice a year and worked in different time zones—was responsible for coordinating logistics nationally.
Issue: To be effective, team members needed to develop a deeper understanding of each other's critical success factors, understand how individual roles and responsibilities impacted team objectives, and function as an integrated team. Reliance on virtual communication further complicated the team's interaction.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: The leader decided to bring the team together in a central location, and worked with a LEGO SERIOUS PLAY facilitator to design a workshop to improve group communication and productivity. The workshop clarified each team member's responsibilities, functions, and constraints, and the interdependencies among all the team members. Individual special strength models and team identity models were also constructed. Using the landscape they created a representation of the entire complex system that they were all part of, the team replayed a number of team breakdown situations and used their new team knowledge to play out various alternative responses. These scenario plays helped them understand how they could avoid misunderstandings and bad communication in the future.
Outcome: The workshop had a dramatic impact on the team's morale and productivity. In the words of the team leader, “We continued talking about the business scenarios after the workshop. My team wants to discuss a different scenario at each staff meeting, and they want to get together face-to-face once a quarter. The staff meeting will be much more about how we can help each other. Dinner that night was so different from the previous night. [It was as though] we had become a team overnight.”
Case Example 12:
Background: The embassy, located in a Latin American country, is staffed with a mix of local and expatriate employees, a number of whom were recently hired. The ambassador heads the embassy, with the Deputy Head of Mission as second in command. The embassy represents a European country.
Issue: A VIP delegation, including a number of leading business people and dignitaries, were coming to the country for an official visit. Such visits are the moment for an embassy to shine; however, they also require detailed and demanding planning. Their intense nature stresses full execution: everything has to work smoothly. Cultural differences and varying experience only add to the challenge.
The embassy wanted to prepare for the unexpected in order to make better decisions if such an event happened.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: A one-day workshop was conducted with the entire team—16 people in total. The team was split into two groups reflecting the day-to-day subgroups in which the employees would work. Each had its own facilitator, one local, the other from the European country.
Outcome: The group developed a set of Simple Guiding Principles (SGPs, Application Technique 7) that would help them make good decisions when the unexpected occurred. These principles would help employees act immediately and remain aligned so that an event or interaction they hadn't foreseen wouldn't throw them for a loop. The teams also articulated what kind of group culture they would like to maintain leading up to and during the VIP visit. In order to develop their Simple Guiding Principles and a better preparedness, they also played out a number of possible events that could happen during the visit.
Case Example 13:
Background: Two nursing homes in the same small town had just merged, creating a new facility. The new manager had led one of the two, and had just formed her new leadership team. Both homes had been run by the local government, and the merger had been an attempt to achieve better economics through economies of scale.
Issue: The intention was quite simply not only to form a leadership team, but to create the best possible leadership team. The new leader wanted to hit the ground running and eradicate any instance of an “us versus them” mentality between staff members from the previous nursing homes.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: The LEGO SERIOUS PLAY facilitators designed a long one-day workshop where the participants built models of themselves, including elements like what they believed in and what they saw as their competencies. This was followed by building models of the kind of decision-making culture it would take to be the best possible leadership team. They then tested these cultural elements with Application Technique 6 where they played out various scenarios that might occur.
Outcome: Participants emerged from the session as one team, with a much deeper understanding of each other and an agreement on how to work together, thereby allowing the newly merged nursing home to start off with an immediate advantage.
Case Example 14:
Background: The learning and development division within a global consulting company decided to develop a leadership development program focusing on helping participants to realize what essential qualities they need to master in order to achieve their ultimate goal. For them, the goal was to move from an end-to-end management style to a leadership style based on empowering, delegating, and thinking strategically.
Issue: The goals of the program were:
Enhance the participants' ability to think, communicate, and act strategically in a project leadership role (i.e., develop skills that would help them decide where to look, what to focus on, and how to act, while leaving the day-to-day course of action to their team).
Foster the participants' innovative capabilities, inspire them, and give them tools to challenge the current ways of thinking while not assuming that what has worked in the past also will work in the future.
Increase the participants' consultative skills by strengthening their facilitation, cocreation, and advisory skills with a focus on helping the internal clients uncover deeper knowledge and new value, rather than providing solutions and taking action for these internal clients.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: Participants worked with LEGO SERIOUS PLAY over a day and a half to achieve these goals. During the process, they identified
SGP: Get out of my own way.
SGP: Drive conversation; don't just respond.
SGP: Slow down and breathe.
Outcome: As a result, program participants are better equipped to take on more senior roles in the organization due to their ability to strategically lead their teams, clients, and projects. Of the first class of 15 participants, 10 received a promotion to the next level within six months. The company recently completed the program for the second time.
Case Example 15:
Background: Hakuhodo, Inc. is a leading advertising and marketing consulting firm in Japan. The firm has been using LEGO SERIOUS PLAY since 2007 to enhance client cooperation.
Issue: In most Japanese enterprises, promotions of employees are related to their job performance and seniority. Under such circumstances, employees tend to base their career development on the firm's policy and plans. Hakuhodo wanted to develop a new career development program, where employees must plan for their future and take initiative to select their own career goals.
In 2010, the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY facilitators worked together with members of Hakuhodo University to develop a unique career development program in which LEGO SERIOUS PLAY would play a major role. The program targeted middle managers of Japanese firms, mostly Hakuhodo's client firms. Hakuhodo also wanted to apply the program to its own employees and support middle managers who had to choose a career path: to become either professionals with particular expertise or senior managers with their own teams. The program should induce self-motivation in participants, encouraging employees to consider their employer's long-term goals and mission in developing their own careers. The program was also aimed at guiding the participants' decisions about which proper steps to take to accomplish their career goals inside the company.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: Hakuhodo University and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY facilitators underwent a number of pilot trials to complete the program
Reviewing the participant's past
Imagining his or her future
Creating accelerators to boost him or her into that future
Uncovering obstacles that may keep him or her from reaching it
This was conducted by both external as well as internal facilitators.
Outcome: Hakuhodo has used the program, named CreateMe, both internally and with outside clients since 2011, and has enjoyed great success in doing so. The name reflects the idea that each employee, not the company, is responsible for his or her career workshop. The program has given wider career options to participants and given clients opportunities to openly discuss career options in earlier days of the participants' careers.
Case Example 16:
Background: Like many pharmaceutical companies, this medium-sized European player had experienced market changes in recent years. Its patents were running out, and the company's leaders were feeling increased pressure from low-cost and/or copycat products. One part of their answer was to increase focus on talent development, so they decided to launch a search for midlevel managers and talents as part of a 2010 initiative.
Issue: The company wanted to create an innovative process that encouraged employees to learn in a different way than the conventional teaching approach. They selected an experienced group of facilitators and the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY method for the task. The workshop would be part of a longer process, and serve as the main component in the module related to learning how to develop strategy.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: A case was developed in collaboration with the client company where the case company was similar to yet sufficiently different from this particular pharmaceutical company. The participants received the case as preparation and then role-played being the management team; they then went through a session with LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, which helped them in developing the new strategy and action plan.
Participants built a “today” situation—that is, a depiction of the case company's current state. They then created a new model—a vision—that showed what the case company could become. From there, the management team transformed
Outcome: The program was a success; 15 out of 16 participants provided the highest available score in the evaluation. It has since moved from the research and development (R&D) division to being a corporate program.
In the words of the program manager in leadership and talent development: “What we saw was that talents who on a day-to-day basis do not have to relate to business strategy or vision for the future, with the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY method were able to work very specifically with dilemmas in the case, and through that experienced how a real executive group must make difficult and complicated choices in establishing and executing a strategy.”
A participant described it as “Great fun. The best I've ever tried.” Another said, “It was fantastic, especially when it came to something as intangible as the term vision . I have never before experienced that there was no frustration due to poor communication in a team. We got the tools to keep an overview and a common thread in the discussion.” Still another concurred: “It was great because everyone was active and dedicated to the common result. Furthermore, I am confident that we will be able to remember what we have done for many years. The LEGO SERIOUS PLAY method is the most powerful process I have ever attended.”
Case Example # 17:
Background: A government program aimed at employees on sick leave due to factors such as stress, anxiety, or depression. This was in most cases caused by factors in their workplace, factors that were beyond their influence or control. The option was to either get the employees to return to their former workplace or find a new field of work or they would ultimately lose their unemployment benefit and as a consequence be on social welfare, which was not a desirable outcome for anyone.
Issue: The employees in the program were highly diverse with regards to their personal background, general education, profession, and motivation. The challenge was to get this group to realize their potential see that despite the failure they felt they had suffered in their workplace/career, they still had lots of potential and the way to regain motivation was to rediscover their potential, refocus and then move on.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: The intervention consisted of a series of 1- to 2-hour workshops. The workshops were a mix of self-discovery and new ways of thinking that could help them construct new aspirations for both their personal and work life.
Outcome: The method in this case indeed became a very powerful thinking, communication, and problem-solving technique. For the first time during their sick leave the participants were able to put words to their thoughts and feelings in a form that was safe for all. And the bricks indeed fulfilled their most important role of “helping you build in your mind, when you build in the world.” The success rate for these groups in terms of returning to the labor force was remarkably high and many of the participants in the program directly attributed this to the method.
Case Example 18:
Background: Muscular dystrophy is a group of diseases impacting the muscles and the central nervous system. It cannot be cured, and slowly disables the patient. An association with members who suffer from muscular dystrophy or are related to someone with the disease was founded in the early 1970s. The association's goal is to help disease sufferers, and those who care for them, to live active lives and take part in society on an equal footing. It also aims to inform about the disease and create a more widespread understanding.
Issue: The disease has an undeniably huge impact on patients, their families, and their life partners. So how does one define the “good life” in such a situation? What does it mean—and how can or how does one live it?
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY intervention: Together with the team from the rehabilitation center, a one-day LEGO SERIOUS PLAY workshop was designed for patients and their spouses. Some patients had to bring their caretakers as well, who in some cases even had to play an active part in the building as some patients were largely paralyzed. The group was split in two: patients with patients and spouses with spouses. This was crucial, as spouses were seldom given a voice and rarely had the chance to share their feelings, experiences, and frustrations with people who were enduring a similar experience. A full day ended with each person building his or her version of what the “good life” meant, and what they could do—or stop doing—in order to live it.
Outcome: A very emotional day ended with much clarity for most if not all the participants. Many who had only recently been hit with the disease and were still going through a denial phase found it challenging, yet also liberating. They discovered a new version of what a good life could mean. Participants who had suffered longer had a much-welcomed opportunity to be able to articulate what they felt and to find new meaning in the life they could live.
For many, understanding what LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is and what it does is not intuitive. The LEGO brand and the LEGO bricks lead to associations and misunderstandings. Here, we outline five of the most common ones.
Misconception 1: It Is a Tool for Creativity and Innovation Only
It is a very common assumption—almost a prejudice—that LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is a method primarily related to creativity and innovation development or even teaching people how to be innovative. This is simply not the case. While the method is also highly useful for innovation challenges, the users in that field are among the minority. The scope of topics and challenges that the method has been applied to are very broad and continue to expand. Finally, as we have shown throughout this book, it is not a teaching technique.
Misconception 2: It Is a Team-Building Exercise Only
Typically, people who view LEGO SERIOUS PLAY as a team-building exercise confuse it with other techniques using LEGO bricks. They expect the workshop to be a fun break or perhaps a physical activity to kick off a longer session. There are indeed many examples of using LEGO bricks for team building; many of them are good and
Misconception 3: It Is an Icebreaker or a Fun Break (So It Is Not for Serious Business—and Therefore Not for Us)
This is a version of the preceding misconception, but with less focus on the bricks and really no expectations about the outcome. In misconception 2 at least there was the expectation that the team would learn about working together. Here, there are no expectations other than a bit of relaxing fun. As will be clear by now, however, LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is almost the opposite; it is hard fun, and it engages your brain in a playful manner to solve a real problem.
Misconception 4: It Is for Creative People Only (So It Is Not for Me)
As mentioned earlier, the brightly colored LEGO bricks are often a bit of a double-edged sword. Their sheer nature as a toy leads many to think that the method is only for the creative class or people in the creative industries. Few things could be further from the truth. While many people who work in so-called creative industries are used to prototype and use physical objects to model what something may look like, LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is about using the concrete objects to construct new knowledge about the abstract. The process is not about building complicated and artistic models. It is about articulating knowledge and exploring what we know about a given thing. And, as we saw in Chapter 9, the imagination is not something reserved for a few special people. Therefore, no class, group, or educational background is any better suited to the method than others are.
Misconception 5: LEGO Just Wants to Expand Its Market (So There Must Be a Catch, and I Am Not Going to Fall for It)
We have already outlined how the development of LEGO SERIOUS PLAY did not come as the result of some big plan; nor was it developed with a marketing plan up
We will now move from looking at how the method has been used in a wide variety of organizations and the misunderstandings that live in the marketplace to how it has been used inside the LEGO Company—and the challenges associated with this particular client.
