This block of Lego can rewire your brain (part 1 of 2)

Combining Lego Serious Play and Data-Driven Organisation Design – Part 1 of 2

Note: the full document (1500 words) covers Parts 1 & 2 and the literature references – please like this on LinkedIn, and comment 'send' and I will happily send it to you.

Lego fascinates every generation. The simplicity of the bricks; the potential for creation. And goodness, the astonishing extensions of the brand. The latest I saw was a TV show called Lego Master Builders – a sort of X-Factor for big kids who’d always wanted 1 million bricks at their disposal. It looked a lot of fun.

When Lego Serious Play [LSP] also showed up at the European Organisation Design Forum in Budapest 2018, I thought I should get advice from experts who could explain the when, how and why of using Lego to achieve organisational change.

When should you use Lego? Nick Richmond, OD & LSP expert at Tricordant sees at least three opportunities within org design where Lego helps people achieve significant impact:

1)    to build a shared view of current reality

2)    to explore ‘design criteria’ for the future

3)    to define future options

How do you use Lego? 3-6 people with a limited number of bricks each make a simple model. Each then takes a turn to describe why they have made it that way. Using a limited number of bricks helps people give them metaphorical meanings. To create a shared understanding (e.g. of the organisation or issue) the individual models are merged into one shared model. The group then agrees a narrative that tells the story of the whole model.

How far down the organisation can it be used? Lego Serious Play can be trained and rolled-out in waves by internal coaches. The Lego organisation itself started the use of Lego Serious Play to address its own strategic challenges in the early 2000s. From near bankruptcy in 2004, Lego has become one of the most successful toy companies in the world. [Robertson, 2013]

What happens when you use Lego? People open up, express their feelings in the Lego and in their descriptions. They listen to one another. They see each other’s point of view. They start to build a new shared reality with multiple perspectives. Arnold Adolfse, ex-Rabobank, ex-Berenschot and the Dutch Ministry of Health has used simple Lego exercises with senior managers even up to Board level. It helps to unblock thinking. For example, Adolfse reported, a thirty minute exercise helped managers “who had been repeating themselves and turning in circles, suddenly realise that they shared one very important assumption.”

Why does it work?

The literature suggests that when people sit down to play with Lego they explore possibilities [Zosh, 2017; Frick, 2013]. Their brains anticipate and model options. The tactile experience of turning the bricks in one’s hands actually stimulates new ideas, Adolfse suggests. Of course, it also helps that many people have previous experience of Lego, and that their previous experience is generally positive. They start with a smile – and perhaps some concern about playing with children’s toys.

When looking at another person’s creation, and hearing them tell their story, there is the same psychological tension as listening to the telling of a joke: how will it be resolved? How will it make sense? There is no perfect way to put the blocks together – it makes sense only by hearing the other person’s explanation. [Rasmussen, 2006]

When the blocks click together, when the story is fitted to them, new connections are made between neurons. The physical structure and the story are linked. The metaphor is seen, remembered and valued. The participants have co-created their future. I’m sure all of our kids could have told us this: using blocks to tell a story, Lego really can rewire your brain.

In the next blog, I’ll explore cover the benefits of co-creation and the way that it integrates with Concentra’s Data-Driven Organisation Design approach