10 years of LEGO Serious Play friendship

Wow. Time flies when you are having fun—serious fun!  

Dearest colleagues,

We—Denise Meyerson and Jacqueline Lloyd Smith—met a decade ago at one of the original LEGO? Serious Play? community meetings at the LEGO Systems Group Headquarters in Billund, Denmark. We have been on quite a journey over the past 10 years.

The incredibly powerful LEGO? Serious Play? methodology enabled us to become part of a dynamic and passionate community, which has taken us to all ends of the earth. Between the two of us we have trained across the globe for top organisations: Coca Cola, Microsoft, Hermes, T. Rowe Price, Kaiser Permanente, Channel, SAP, and Procter and Gamble—just to name a few.

Over the years we have continued to develop and innovate using the groundwork of the methodology, giving us better applications to meet the needs of our clients.

Who would have thought LEGO? Serious Play? and customer insight design would have been a great match? Or that we could use the 3D methods to reduce the effects of poverty or in Anti-Bully community workshops to target teenage behaviours? For every client challenge, we adapted and extended the original process to bring about changes in organisations and communities, and to touch the lives of thousands of participants.

We were both such strong believers in the principles of why play and business are like two wings of a butterfly, we continued to attend the incredible yearly LEGO Education IDEA events in Billund, Denmark. There we met and played with top academics from Harvard and MIT, inventors, and entrepreneurs who had the same mission: Ensuring play is a key part of everyone’s development. It is not an escape from serious learning. It is what drives deep and impactful learning.

We even got to play some music with Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, owner of the LEGO Group. This was an experience money cannot buy!

Our total commitment was reflected in the honour we both received when we were appointed to the original LEGO? Serious Play? advisory board in 2009. We were also in a group of just four master trainers who were entrusted to take the process out into the wider community and to ensure other facilitators and trainers use the methodology as it was intended.

Here is a video of our vision for the community from that original board meeting:

Team Jacquie and Denise did not stop there. 

We continued to integrate the process into the world renowned Creative Problem Solving methodology. It is now part of a total innovation toolkit for organisations seeking to explore possibilities through a formal process.

We collaborated on training materials to ensure the next generation of trainers would deliver the LEGO? SERIOUS PLAY? methods training in the most brain friendly way, working with curriculum designers to ensure knowledge transfer. We continue to innovate and move the process forward based on our extensive market knowledge.

And then bright spark—Denise—decided we needed to collate all this knowledge and practical know-how into a book that would form a guide for facilitators around the world. The distance between Canada and Australia did not cause any interference for us. The book has been a hot seller and has enabled us to connect even further than we ever imagined with a community of facilitators, educators, trainers and learning and development professionals.

And the first book led to the second book, and so on.....

We now have iconic LEGO ducks marching across the globe from Uluru in Australia to the coastal mountain ranges of Canada. Team leaders, trainers, and facilitators are injecting new enthusiasm and motivation into their teams to promote engagement and improved culture. After all, who said that hard skills should be trained before 'soft' skills...

And if that weren’t enough, bright spark—Jacquie—launched into holding annual meet-ups in North America for others in the community to share ideas, generate new ideas, and take our skills to the next level. We hold these meeting events in an un-conference format to enable everyone to learn and contribute. Everyone trained is welcome at our meetings because we strongly believe, as stated in the original vision video, “We want to make sure everyone is included and we have no lonely guys.”

So here’s to collaboration with people who understand the real definition of the word! It's incredibly powerful to see in reality how an enduring relationship with the right energy and passion can make such a difference to the organisations we partner with and the teams who drive performance.

May we enjoy another decade of fun, strategic play, and taking the business community with us as we embrace different ways of learning and innovating in a world of constant flux.

In the words of Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen:

“As adults we need to unlearn what we learnt at school so that we can creatively face the challenges of the future,” (LEGO IDEA Conference 2015).

Play Well! 

For more information on how you can be trained as a LEGO Serious Play facilitator, please call us on 1300768550 or email [email protected]. Our amazing 'What the Duck' program is an amazing addition to your team leader toolkit - they can change team culture one LEGO brick at a time!