How to ‘play’ with people’s brains to break down silos and make the most of everyone

“Everyone is so busy and stressed out. When we try to plan, they just can’t think about the potential of doing things differently beyond their own silos. But not thinking cross-silo is a big cause of the busyness. We all know it, we just have to find a way to change it.”

If you know me, you won’t be surprised that a part of my answer to this client’s challenge was that she should run a LEGO? Serious Play? session early on in the planning process. This would create a psychologically safe container that would provide the conditions in which her team could build alignment and encourage breakthrough thinking.

But apparently, that was all just “trendy blah blah” (even with my lovely case studies, like this one).

She wanted to know why the LSP method worked; why would people behave, think, react differently just because they were playing with LEGO?How would it make them perceive things differently?

Recent learnings in neuroscience are helpful here.?

One of the clearest explanations I have read (and often refer back to) is in Caroline Webb’s excellent book?How to Have Good Day[1].

Webb describes two neuroscientific concepts.

The first is behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman’s idea that the brain is made up of two systems[2] and has two modes of activity.

The system one is where what we think of as reasoning happens. It’s the home of deliberate, reasoned thinking: it’s very clever, but it’s also relatively slow and relies heavily on working memory which has a limited amount of bandwidth.?

The system two is where automatic thinking happens.

This is the part of the brain that provides an autopilot for routine tasks – so you can drive a car without having to think about each movement, for example.

It’s very fast (so fast that you mostly don’t realise it’s working). To do everything it needs to do, this system filters out what it sees as unnecessary information based on past experience, to provide shortcuts and avoid overload of information.

(If you haven’t already seen?this experiment?with basketball passes, check it out for a really powerful way to see how this works).

The result is that, as individuals, we each, based on our different experiences, ‘see’ the same situation quite differently.

Webb’s second concept is what she calls the Discover-Defend axis.

The idea is that the brain constantly scans the environment for things that are rewarding and things that are threatening.

When it perceives potential reward, it goes into Discover mode – an exploratory, anticipatory state which enables deliberate thinking, handling of complexity and a positive mood – all good for problem solving and creativity.

When it perceives a threat, ‘survival circuits’ built into our DNA driven by the automatic system create a more primal, Defend mode of thinking characterised by fight, flight or freeze, where speed of reaction is prioritised over activity; energy is diverted from the deliberate system and shortcuts based on past experience spring into action.

In short, when the survival circuits are freaked out, it’s hard to engage with complex issues which require you think differently.

If you want to make the most of everyone’s potential to contribute from their own experience to a wider change effort, it's important to keep the brains in the room tuned to discovery mode.

Now, imagine you’re going into that strategy or change workshop.

Everyone agrees that whatever the details of the strategy, there will need to be change – silos will need to be removed; new ways of working will be required; probably there will be winners and losers personally even as (or, more accurately, if) the organisation gains. Most likely the pay-off to change is going to be further away and less certain than the pain of going through it.

Even if all the participants have a strong commitment to collaborating, in a complex change environment ‘defend’ scanning will be in overload.

Most participants are likely to get taken over at some point – even without noticing it – by the automatic system.

During this kind of key interaction, if you want to get real work done, it’s important to keep the brains in the room tuned to discovery mode so that, not only does the Deliberate system get more resource, but also the positive intuition that comes from the Automatic system can be activated.

Even a skilled and well-prepared facilitator is going to struggle with these dynamics in a traditional meeting format. Once they notice the signs of a participant exhibiting defensive signs, it can be very hard to keep things on track.?

Which is why playful techniques like LEGO? Serious Play? can be very effective.

Properly facilitated, LSP has a number of benefits in building the conditions that have been shown to support a Discover mood. For example:

• LSP workshops are designed to bring people into a state of ‘Flow’ which promotes feelings of competence and achievement which in turn support a discover mindset
• The building of models and the appreciation usually accompanying them provide frequent social rewards
• The involvement of the hands disrupts established (automatic) neural pathways, creating new connections and enabling you to pay attention to new details and see things in a new way
• Progressively building a model (in 3D) during the workshop reduces the strain on working memory and the worries about forgetting details – it’s all there for all to see during whole workshop.?This really helps in terms consolidating understanding of the bigger picture and keeping the discussion on track vs each participant simply presenting their views at the beginning of a session
• The increased openness, honesty and authenticity of conversations conducted through the models reduces the impact of trust issues (and often stimulates healthy discussion about areas where trust issues need to be addressed); and
• The joint building of models hugely increases the level of commitment to the results of the activity and provides an excellent platform for the next key interaction.

All of this is an addition to the reduced potential for misunderstanding as the process enables a much greater mutual understanding of the ideas behind the words we use.

In summary, given what we are learning about how the brain works, we might want to stop thinking about play as the opposite of work.

Maybe it’s more accurate to say that the opposite of work is meetings; and bringing play into difficult meetings (through methods like LEGO Serious Play or my Playful Principles? approach to any meeting) can enable much more effective work to get done.

?

If you found this post interesting, please do 'like' and 'share' it and let me know your thoughts. Thanks in advance.

?

[1]How To Have A Good Day; Caroline Webb, 2016

[2]?Thinking, Fast and Slow; Daniel Kahneman, 2011