The Power of Serious Play with Lego

In 1949 the Founder of LEGO, Ole Kirk Cristiansen had a powerful dream: to create a toy that would build the next generation of engineers. Well, several generations later and after having become the world’s most powerful brand, LEGO is building much more than engineers.I’ve spent the past three days at the most innovative and inspirational conference I’ve ever attended, the Playful Learning conference in Manchester.  Several sessions there covered Lego Serious Play (LSP), a methodology for infusing playing with Lego with formal learning environments for adults in particular. This has applications in schooling at all levels, Higher Education, business consultation and professional development.

A warmup activity had us represent ourselves in the current moment and space. This was me looking through a window into a world of possibilities I couldn't even comprehend yet.

The method itself is not a big secret: it takes its cue from Kolb’s experiential learning cycle and basically describes four stage of action and reflection in an iterative process designed to link thinking and doing. Different facilitators have slightly different approaches: some can be academic and teacherly, others can be quite business-like, and others still approach it almost as a type of therapy or counselling session. The core, always, is to pose a question or task to which participants respond by building a model, and then speak to the model in a storytelling and reflective process that reveals broader thoughts and feelings.

Two of the key aspects of the method are also the things that have been shown to have enormous power in learning and personal development: reflection and storytelling. The ability to reflect on our experiences objectively, assess reasons for outcomes, and plan into the future is absolutely essential for effective learning. Storytelling is an excellent way for imaginatively engaging with the reality of our lives, and creates a safe space for us to say things we might not do so directly. Building models in Lego and talking about them is an excellent way to do both, and we often see kids do this quite spontaneously – telling stories for their minifigures, and so on.

The experience of an LSP workshop is quite amazing: ‘play’ really is at the core of the activity, and this means primarily a safe comfort zone where you can project your ideas onto the model. For example I heard of a dysfunctional work unit who were able to say what they thought about their work colleagues because they were anonymised and represented in the figures.

In addition to this safety, LSP a space where to make progress to need to take risks and enter a zone of some discomfort (which we know from adaptive leadership is the only way to create the conditions for real change). Ultimately it’s very fun: building with Lego just seems to engage a fun centre of the brain, but what is surprising is the insights and potential for very deep conversations that can emerge.

At the end of a four-hour session on using LSP to help define how to reduce our carbon footprint, the size and complexity of this shared model was impressive.

I can see numerous applications for the Lego Serious Play method, especially in places that have difficulty bridging silos or promoting innovation due to risk adversity. It is excellent for overcoming barriers that result of organisational hierarchies or cultural/language differences. I would love to see colleagues at all levels from senior management to worker bees, engage in rich conversations that build the foundations for (re-) imagining the future quite profoundly.

Needless to say I was quite impressed with the potential of LSP – stay tuned, there is more to come on this one.