Think with your Hands: – How to get started with Lego Serious Play

Think with your Hands:– How to get started with Lego Serious Play Martin Sandberg 2013

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation -Plato

What bricks to use? • Use the most basic Lego bricks • They enable thinking in metaphors

When to use Lego Serious Play? • Team building • Unleashing creative thinking for accelerated innovation • Work out a solution to a shared problem • Create a shared mindset about something • Constructive discussions where everybody is heard • Build a shared vision • Leadership development • One-on-one coaching and Team coaching • Use with your children, family, school, ...

Think with your hands Just start building. Trust your hands. Let them pick the bricks they want. Fiddle about ...

Lego Serious Play – Steps • The Challenge - Question • Build a model – Metaphor • Sharing – Give meaning – Tell your story • Questions and reflections

Warm Up – Skills Building • Normal, non-metaphorical representation • Metaphorical representation • Combine models into a shared group model • Storytelling

Warm Up Excercises • Build a duck, 5-10 min • Build a tower, 10 min • Build something; assign a description – metaphor, 10 • Build your dream colleague – metaphor, 10 min • My Monday mornings – story line, 10 min

Duck • Build a duck using 7 bricks • Explain how it is a duck • Are different people’s ducks similar? • Now remove 3 bricks so that you have 4 left • Explain how it is still a duck

Highest Tower Either individually or as teams: • Build the highest tower you can in 3 min • It should be able to stand without any support • You cannot reserve bricks • Share something about your tower – explain what it means • Point out differences in the towers – no right or wrong way of building • Explain how you reasoned in the beginning. Who did what? Did you assign roles? Did you split the work? • Test for stability – show attachment to something we have built when it breaks or is disassembled

Dream Colleague 1. Build a model that represents your Dream Colleague, 3 min • Share, 1 min per person • The facilitator asks questions to better understand the meanings of different parts of the models 2. Take one aspect from eachmodel and make a shared model with the others in the team and place it on a paper napkin • Everybody should agree on all the parts of the shared model. • Everybody on the team explains the shared model

My Monday Mornings • Build a story describing your Monday Mornings, 3-4 mins • Share your metaphor and storyline 2. Take one part which you think is most important and put it in the middle and build a model together with everyone else in the group

Build Something and Re-Interpret It • Build whatever you feel like building, 3 min • The facilitator assigns a meaning to the model • The participant explains how the model represents X, 1 min. E.g. ”My dream holiday is to scuba dive. My model describes the boat and ...” Examples of meanings to assign: • Your dream holiday • The ideal home • Your favorite activity • An ingenious invention • Your favorite song • Arelaxing day • Your neighbor • The car of the future • Your favourite TV show or movie

Listen with your eyes Look at the model that is being shared– use your visual sense to grasp and understand even more of what the other participants are describing

Examples of Challenges

A) Future Success • Build a model which shows the road blocks to your immediate and future success • Build a model describingwhat your future will look like without the barriers • Build a model which shows what you need from others and yourself to knock down the barriers to your success • Combine your models which will show how you will get support from the team/group

B) Team Member • Build a model showing who you are on the team • What do you bring to the team? • What could you bring to the team? • Buildsome of the functions that you carry out on the job, also include some hidden aspects of you • Build an addition to your model that shows how you think others in your team perceive you • Who are you at your best? • Build an addition to your model showing your thoughts about this – what characterizes you when you are at your best?

C) Team • Build an individual model showing how you perceive your team: • Show what you believe your team is all about • What is the spirit of the team? • The feel of the team? • The values of the team? • Build a shared model that shows what your team is all about • What is the team’s shared perception of the team? • What is the spirit and the ‘feel’ of the team?

D) Team Aspirations • Build a individual model showing what you aspire to be like as a team in the future • Build a shared model • Each person explains each part of the shared model

E) Team Goals • Build a model describing the goals for the team • Build a model describing the objectives to meet the goals (first steps to meet the goals) • Build a model with the objectives in the form of a storyline to show when in time they should be completed

F) How do you see yourself? • Build a model describing how you see yourself in your role (team member, Scrum Master, Product Owner, Manager, ... )

G) Your role • Build a model describing your role on the team • What is easy in your role? • What is difficult in your role?

H) Strengths and Weaknesses • Build a model showing the strengths of your Product, Team, Organization, ... • Build a model describing how you can utilize the strengths • Build a modell showing the weaknesses • Build a model describing how you can remove or compensate for the weaknesses

J) Appreciation • Build a model describing what you appreciated in the workshop • Build a model describing what you would like to change in a future similar workshop

K) Retrospectives • Build a model describing what went well • Build a model describing things that we should start or stop doing

How does Lego Serious Play work? • Much of our brain’s activity is dedicated to the manipulation of our hands • When we model with our hands and tell stories there is more neuronal activity and better suffusion of blood to critical areas of the brain • 70-80% of our brain’s nerve endings are connected to our hands

How does Lego Serious Play work? • Psychological Flow: Individuals gain most from a learning process when they are committed to and enjoy the process

The Facilitator • Creates Open-ended building challenges • Gets the group’s dialogue to serve its purpose • Makes the reflections and dialogue process easier • Helps participants express themselves • Asks clarifying questions

Participants’ Etiquette • The Lego model is your answer to the building challenge • There are no wrong answers • There is no ONE right answer – everyone has different views • What the model looks like is not the most important thing • The meaning attached to each model is what makes it valuable • The Lego models are tools and means to an end

Group Size • Roughly 4-8 people per group • One workshop group requires one facilitator • It is generally not possible to facilitate two groups ‘side by side’ because each group would need focused attention from the facilitator, at the same time

Play ! • Put bowls of Lego bricks in your meeting rooms and see what happens • Combine Lego Serious Play with other facilitation techniques • Play around with the Lego bricks and invent new challenges • Get your workshops to a flying start by starting with Lego Serious Play to get people talking and energized

References • seriousplay.com • strategicplayroom.ning.com • seriousplaypro.com • Open source introduction document:LSP Introduction • User requirements with Lego: LSP and User Requirements

Talks you might find interesting • The future depends on play: The future depends on play_Seriouslythemovie • Tim Brown: Tales of creativity and play ted.com/talks/lang/en/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play.h • Ken Robinson says schools kill creativityted.com/talks/lang/en/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html • Sunni Brown: Doodlers, unite!ted.com/talks/sunni_brown.html

Food for Thought • How come executives love playing with Lego? • Why do we associate work with ’serious’ and play with ’not serious’ ? • How can you use Lego Serious Play when you have distributed teams? • Is Lego Serious Play still ’serious’ when it is used in schools? • What is a ’lean in’ vs. a ’lean back’ meeting? • How long can you keep your fingers away from a pile of Lego bricks (e.g. in a meeting room)? • You can download this presentation here: slidesha.re/ONgvsj

Think with your Hands: – How to get started with Lego Serious Play