Building a Better Business Using the Lego Serious Play Method

Chapter 4The LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Method

The LEGO SERIOUS PLAY method is a regular and systematic way of accomplishing what we have described in previous chapters using the LEGO brick and the serious play concepts as the dominant levers.

As noted earlier, the need that sparked the initial idea for LEGO SERIOUS PLAY did not come from a desire to develop a method that helps groups and individuals think, communicate, and solve problems together—not by any stretch of the imagination. Rather, the impetus was exclusively to use the combination of bricks and playing seriously to help an executive team bring more imagination into their strategy development. Today, we refer to the solution to this particular challenge as the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY Real Time Strategy For the Enterprise application. This is a particular strategy workshop in which the method is applied.

When we look at the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY method, we typically split the definition into three parts:

1. It is a systematic set of group dynamic principles.
2. It is a set of principles for the systematic use of the LEGO brick.
3. It is the systematic use of the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY techniques, which consist of a Core Process and seven Application Techniques (ATs).

The three parts are intertwined and inseparable. Try to use only one of them without the others and it simply won't work—and couldn't be categorized as LEGO SERIOUS PLAY.

The purpose of the group dynamic procedures is to destroy the 20/80 meeting syndrome, a trend we first discussed ...