The Power of LEGO Serious Play

Over the last few months I have been with Etex Building Performance delivering my presentation concerning complacency and delivering short LEGO Serious Play safety culture sessions to the 5 different shifts on site for their return to work.

A short safety session looks a little like this:

First a warm-up exercise where delegates use up to 9 bricks to build an animal. Each shift had a different animal to build and were either asked to pick 9 random bricks and then build or just build from their exploration bag. Each delegate held up their animal and told a story concerning their animal.

The second exercise was very much about the delegates building a model concerning their view, interruption of the question asked about either leadership, communication, culture, behaviour or personalities. As well as these subjects Etex Building Performance has used Safe Start as their health and safety vehicle to achieve a safer culture for the last two years. With Safe Start there is a further 8 elements that can be chosen to explore. So, with running 4 sessions a day and with a total of 5 shifts going through the sessions (20 sessions in total) I was able to ask the question twice to get a clarification or not from different shifts attending. It allowed myself the chance to mix subjects up to ensure delegates could not say to others that they will build XY or Z and kept sessions fresh.

The last session was asking the delegates to build a safety message for 2020, that would either help them, who they work with on shift or the company as a whole.

As LEGO say the sessions are about hard fun and 100% interaction for delegates. Yes, it is hard fun as delegates have to build a model to the answer asked and it stretches the old grey cells and they enjoy explaining their model to others (and delegates are encouraged to take photos of their creations to remind them what they built and show others inside of work or at home). It’s 100% interactive as delegates are encouraged to explain their view of the world, listen and ask open questions about the other models.

What have I learnt over the sessions with Etex Building Performance and the delegates? I have learnt how some delegates use different bricks to show PPE for their models and some didn’t use bricks to highlight PPE. As the LEGO Serious Play exploration bags were used for the exercises there is a round clear yellow brick, a pink clear flower shape brick or an orange triangle brick that was used as hard hats. With the use of bricks used or not for PPE, it will allow the safety team to explore whether them shifts and delegates using bricks see PPE as essential for work, or just a bolt on and those not using bricks as PPE, see PPE as automatically part of the uniform and needed to work safe.

It was interesting how many delegates over the sessions used or added to some of the Safe Start elements to build their safety message for the year ahead. Some delegates even used previous employment safety slogans to elements of their models.

As with all questions ever asked with using LEGO Serious Play delegates can sometimes build the same answer but use different models to achieve this. One such question was about keeping your eyes on the task and three delegates built models that concerned the need to watch where you are going and used a plane, helicopter and a drone. These delegates were not sitting next to each other.

There were times when delegates built parts of their working environments and machines to illustrate the message they wanted to get across. Forklift drivers were a classic as to highlight their forklift most used two long flat bricks as forks on their models. Engineers could not help but organise their bricks in a way to make it easier to build, normally in rows.

With some models pictured and all feedback captured, it is now down to the organisation to use the information captured to explore deeper answers to the feedback. Facilitators, advisors and consultants can only do so much to generate that spark to get a safer culture, it is down to the organisation itself to achieve the next set of results.

LEGO Serious Play is a great way to explore a different way in achieving results and checking in with progress made. LEGO may be seen as a toy; it has though always been a way to explore and imagine.

I have with these short sessions only used individual models to explore the delegates insights. There is though shared models where delegates can commit to a common goal or idea and there is landscaping models where delegates can explore a project at greater depth and see the connections to others of concern or influence.