This past month has seen a lot of Lego building. No, not at the weekends, not as de-stress therapy, but as an integral part of my working day.
I was asked to run a series of workshops for a medium-sized organisation (around 75 staff) to boost employee engagement, and to provide an opportunity for everyone to examine and discuss the internal issues that were preventing them from delivering first class customer service.
As this was an engineering company, with a high proportion of technically trained people, LEGO Serious Play ™ was an obvious choice of tools.
In case you haven’t come across it before, LSP is an amazingly efficient and practical facilitation technique that really works – at all levels. LSP provides an intuitive shortcut that helps participants to quickly and fully engage their imaginations, and enables them to speak and share ideas with confidence, commitment and insight. It is a truly effective way to explore issues in a radically different way, and it gives everyone an equal chance to participate and be heard. And best of all – it’s great fun!
LSP practitioners talk about LEGO turning “lean-out” meetings – everyone leaning back in their chair, doodling, checking emails, looking at the clock – into “lean-in” meetings – everyone leaning forward, busily doing, talking, listening, actively engaged in the whole process.
Which has been my experience too. The response was brilliant, the level of engagement over the whole series of workshops was staggering, and the list of valuable suggestions for improvement runs over 10 sheets of flipchart paper!
I predict a lot more LEGO in my future…..
Is LEGO Serious Play™ what your next planning meeting needs? See my LSP website page for more details.
