Reflecting IT Strategy with Lego Serious Play

When I posted pictures of LEGO blocks a couple of weeks ago, I received several questions what this was all about. In this blog, I try to explain how we leveraged LEGO Serious Play (https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/serious-play ) to have an open discussion on technical strategy and the benefits and challenges of its implementation.

What is LEGO Serious Play?

LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is a facilitation methodology developed at The Lego Group, available under an open-source community-based model. Its goal is to improve creative thinking and communication. People build 3-dimensional models of their ideas with Lego bricks and tell stories about their models. Hence the name "serious play". [Wikipedia]

It began as an experiential process designed for use in guided workshops with adults to prompt dialogue and encourage reflection, as well as develop problem-solving skills and the use of imagination.

The aim is to stimulate the left-side of your brain (logical, linear thinking) as well as the right-side of your brain (creative imagination, visualization, holistic thinking). ?By crafting something tangible, it makes the idea more real. As need to be deliberate about how you build something, it stimulates the thought on what you want to convey with the model.

And yes, there is some element of “play“, making the whole exercise fun.

How did we apply LSP to technology?

Similar to Enterprise Design Thinking (https://www.ibm.com/design/practices/#enterprise-design-thinking ), we started with a short ice-breaker exercise to get started. In this exercise, we had to express certain words using LEGO blocks. Words like “growth”, “summer”, and “pleasure”. What sounds easy to some, can be really hard for others.

Although LEGO blocks evolved to a wide variety of elements, the one you are looking for may not exist. #Creativity is needed. And once you build the model, will people be able to translate your artwork back to the word without giving hints? #Creativity is needed again. Let me suggest to try this at home to get a sense of it.

In the next step, we brought it to business context: Explain elements of your technical strategy, and its challenges. In our group, it was the transition of monolithic architectures towards containers and micro-services and leveraging platforms, CI/CD, observability, and automation to improve quality and velocity. This exercise was really hard, as we are used to doing this with documents, charts, and obviously PowerPoint slides - certainly not using LEGO blocks. But it worked. The exercise was done individually, so people could tell their story. People started thinking with their hands.

In the retrospective following, each creator described their “artwork”. In this visual narrative, every single block mattered and had to be explained. And often, colors matter as well. Everybody else was asked to hear with their eyes and ears. To listen to the nuances and emphasis made in the model. We quickly voted on the best stories, to in-turn elaborate and enhance.

The following step was a group exercise to complement the models. How can it be enhanced? How can the challenges be softened? What are effective practices and technologies to support the strategy? This exercise allowed us to identify actionable items to work on. Breaking those further down into Minimum Valuable Products (MVPs) to see early results and allow us to pivot or persevere.

As the final step, we recorded a 2min video that walks through the model. Using a pointer, we introduce the model step by step (actually: block by block). Like a movie, the story evolved by adding module after module. The result was a comprehensive story, a technical topic explained in a way that everybody understands. I must say that our team was very proud of the video, which has since been shared with the wider community.

My Retro

It was the first time I was exposed to LSP and enjoyed it quite a bit. As a very logical person, it was a very different approach to my typical ways of working. Which is precisely why I was interested to give it a try.

I was amazed how smooth the exercises went, with zero negative?attitude by anyone in the team. Certainly, the brilliant facilitation by Petra Bücher , Yvette Machowski , and Svenja Kempf (Laing) was instrumental in making the workshop a success. Kudos also to the joint team of TK and IBM: Everyone was open to the approach; everyone trusted the method. With just a few exercises we formed a team working on a common target, ignoring company badges.

It was great to see that LSP does work in the context of complex technology, to tell the story and have a meaningful collaboration and engagement. Asking about the particular elements of the model (why this brick, why this order, why this color) allowed us to spot and understand nuances that would have easily been missed otherwise.

After the series of exercises, there remains the question “so what?” or “what’s next?”. This workshop was not the place to position technology, products, or service offerings. It was to bring the people together, to see the human and not just the company. And this is super important to build trust to take on strategic projects. Nevertheless, I do see the opportunity to expand the LSP exercises, for instance, complementing models with our offerings, or showcasing relevant client projects based on our experience – again using LSP. This allows positioning offerings in context of the current as-is state, and how some of the identified challenges can be softened through technology and skills & experience towards the desired “to-be”.

I can’t wait for the time when a client presents at conferences such as THINK to TechExchange and tells their story of using IBM technology, telling the story using LEGO blocks.