Lessons from LSP: How to accelerate progress by closing the disconnect between senior and junior team members

I recently ran a workshop with a group of managers within a key business unit of one of the biggest corporates in the UK, developing a vision for its future in the face of an imminent and existential threat to a major part of its business.

This was a valiant attempt to get a diverse team of senior managers to use their experience to rapidly do a job outside their normal roles which may, in many organisations, have been farmed out to a consultancy. A real effort to tap into the potential of the company’s own people – and very much in line with the LEGO? Serious Play? philosophy that there is huge untapped potential within individuals and teams in most organisations.

The team, challenged with finding a new sustainable business model, had been finding it hard to come up with ideas which they could agree on and write down; they’d been having long meandering discussions without much to show for it. They were frustrated and under pressure.

Bravely in the circumstances, they agreed to run a full day LEGO? Serious Play? Real Time Strategy session during which the 12-strong team built – with the typical LSP blend of laughter and insight – a landscape of models that described a shared vision for the future of the company, the capabilities that the company could build on to deliver the vision and the external elements that could have an impact on the business.

At the end of the session, most of the team were enthusiastic about what had been, for them, an enlightening experience – they had never seen the whole picture before, laid out so it made coherent sense. There had been some interesting new ideas as new connections were made, but it was how it all fit together that was most inspiring and had taken them to what one described as ‘a new level of understanding’.

So far so good, but here comes the disconnect: the three most senior managers in the team were not at all happy.

They hadn’t seen a great deal that was new; for them this was another day lost when it could have been spent coming up with ideas. The explanation is simple – in their roles they routinely get to see the big picture. It hadn’t occurred to them that their more junior colleagues didn’t have the whole picture and that having the whole picture (here laid out in 3D over the course of the day) shared among the team working on the project was vital to moving forward.

So, what was gained by removing the disconnect through our LSP workshop so that everyone had a shared view of the strategic landscape? Immediately after the workshop and the following morning, the ideas flowed at pace and a wall was soon filled up with almost 200 ideas quickly grouped into themes that were resonant with the model we had built the previous day and ready for further analysis.

The company’s belief that the team had the knowledge and potential to do this work in-house was correct; but it required a different dynamic, with a level playing field of participation and knowledge within the team to unlock the potential. 

The lesson is that there is enormous value, when you’re working as a team and you’re in a hurry, to step back and take a little time to ensure you have a shared understanding of – at least roughly – where you’re going.

If you'd like to find out how LEGO Serious Play can help you unlock the hidden potential within your team, please do get in touch.

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