Dialogues and LEGO Serious Play

In the morning of Tuesday, April 25th, the DIALOGUES staff chose to test for themselves a new management consulting tool. Without the arbitrary seriousness of an external consultant though, but using Lego bricks. Serious Play, the unconventionally inspired program that launched under the radar by a handful of business oriented Lego staff in Denmark several years ago, has become a serious, modern and relevant business offering. It is further backed by company leadership and gaining ever higher momentum.

At first glance, the emphasis on “Play” may seem absurd. Play is commonly treated as the direct opposite of work, a leisure time filler. Add “Serious” in front of Play, and it may sound like an oxymoron; however the dynamics behind this notion and the subsequent benefits are far more nuanced. Adult professional play, first of all, is not quite the same as a child’s play. With Lego in specific, there is much to learn from those colorful plastic bricks. Adults, and especially professionals, play with their sense of identity and their goals are more conscious: emotional expression, cognitive development and constructive competition. Using Lego bricks allows the user to express their objectives through their own perspective, and manifest their end goals through the very objects they construct. At the core of the “Serious Play” idea is the notion that when we “think with objects” or “think through our fingers”, we unleash creative energies and modes of thought that most busy adults have forgotten they even possessed.

The Lego Serious Play training lasted two days, and it was especially during day 2 that the inherent benefits of the whole program came to surface. What started as improvisation over a pile of Lego bricks quickly entered the context of unframed problem solving, peer insight and business solution crafting. Day 1, (or stage 1) introduced the core process of the method and theoretical underpinnings, and during day 2 the team focused on how to apply the method for business and organizational development, especially trying to find unique solutions. “The Lego training triggered unexpected parts of my thinking, clearly connecting areas related to creativity to structuring and analysis capacity. It has been a long while since I have been so focused for such a long time. At the end of the day we were happily exhausted, knowing that our time “playing” has been extremely productive!”, said Wendeline Feltz of Dialogues Incubator.

“Lego helps really well to visualize and communicate ideas by using metaphors and Lego bricks”, said Kees van Nunnen of Dialogues Incubator. Indeed, through the careful use of modeling and metaphor, the participants were able to express with their constructions everything they would be unable to put into words. Lego constructions may thus help an organization recognize its nascent, dynamic and unpredictable nature and relationships in a way that flowcharts, block diagrams and graphs usually fail to do so. “Using both left and right sides of our brain while fiddling with the bricks enables you to take a better look at the bigger picture; besides, most problem solving is subconsciously generated, and manual activity can trigger that procedure more effectively”, said Celine Pessers, Innovation Manager of Dialogues Incubator.

Getting managers and employees to “play” with their business may seem a radical departure from the serious concerns of a boardroom. But this is eventually a matter of perspective; seeing play as a serious activity and not as a leisure pursuit can help unleash all those creative energies that are so sorely needed in today’s business environment.

By Dimitris Kritsilis, Creative Developer at Dialogues Incubator