LEGO Serious Play Workshop

“Serious Play” was first developed as a facilitation methodology in the mid-1990s as a way for executives to describe and challenge their views on their businesses. The LEGO Group developed the LEGO Serious Play methodology into a trademarked and successful consulting business over the course of 15 years and 20 iterations.

The LEGO Group ran it as an internally consulting business until 2010 when it became an open source method for the global community. Today LEGO trains and certifies LEGO Serious Play instructors to facilitate workshops for companies that believe play is serious business.

The LEGO Serious Play method stimulates both sides of the brain and results in creative thinking, problem solving, and clearer communication. The tactile nature of the thinking process unlocks new perspectives and the 3D models help people articulate ideas and concepts that may otherwise escape them.

Consider simple questions such as “what’s your identify?” or “how was your pandemic experience?” or “what’s the biggest obstacle in our business?”

In conversation or even at a team offsite, these complex and abstract questions are usually met with shallow or uni-dimensional answers.

LEGO gives syntax a 3D structure where participants are able to build multi-dimensional answers and describe how thinking process behind what each LEGO piece represents, why they strategically places it there, and the interdependencies between pieces and realities.

The playful nature of the workshop get people to get out of their comfort zones; the small bag of LEGOs is only 54 pieces which is not intimidating (even if you never played with LEGOs much), yet the pieces are hand-picked to provide enough building variety to allow unhindered creative expression.