LEGO Serious Play: why strategy sometimes needs to be built - literally
Strategy is not always easy to put into words. Especially when your organisation is growing, changing or facing important choices. Different opinions, assumptions and interests come together, but choosing a direction often remains difficult.
That is why we use LEGO Serious Play as a method at the start of a strategic process: to determine direction more quickly, make choices tangible and reach decisions that have broad support.
What is the LEGO Serious Play method?
LEGO Serious Play is a strategic method in which the building blocks are used as a means of communication. Participants literally build their ideas, insights and implicit knowledge on the table. By building physically, strategic issues become visually tangible. What is difficult to put into words takes shape. This makes it easier to discuss where you are today, which choices lie ahead and which direction you want to take as an organisation.
The method helps make abstract strategic issues concrete.
Where traditional brainstorming sessions sometimes get stuck
Traditional brainstorming sessions and workshops are valuable, but they mainly start from words and often remain insufficiently interactive and participatory. You cannot always immediately put everything you think or feel clearly into words. In strategic processes around brand identity and strategic positioning, important insights can therefore remain beneath the surface. Think of assumptions, doubts, beliefs or differences in how people view the company and the organisation’s future.
By building physically, participants can express what they intuitively think and feel without having to formulate it perfectly straight away. The models are then brought together into one shared landscape. This makes it clear where there is overlap, where there are differences and which choices provide direction for the further business set-up.
Why LEGO Serious Play is a strong start to your strategic process
At the start of a strategic process, there are often many ideas, assumptions and different perspectives. LSP makes these visible and open to discussion from the outset.
The method helps to:
- choose a direction from the outset
- make complex choices tangible
- align different opinions
- map strategic issues visually
-
reach broadly supported decisions more quickly
How do we use LEGO Serious Play?
At comma, LEGO Serious Play is never a stand-alone session, but a technique that we integrate purposefully into our existing strategic workshops. Within scenario thinking, we use the method when building helps make an issue, different perspectives or possible choices more concrete and easier to discuss.
The blocks support the thinking process, but are never the end goal. Participants might, for example, literally visualise their target audience, their current and desired image or their organisation’s distinctive strengths.
Ready to build your strategy?
Is your company facing change, growth, repositioning or a complex strategic issue? Comma would be happy to explore how LEGO Serious Play can help provide direction for your own strategic process.
Let's talk
In this article
By Wouter Mille, strategisch marketeer Comma, brandstrategists
Strategy is not always easy to put into words. Especially not when your organization is growing, changing, or facing important choices. Different opinions, assumptions, and interests converge, yet choosing a direction often remains difficult.
