How can we use Legos to manage the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) nowadays working scenario? WOW! has joined the seminar held by Daniela Chiru based on the method Lego Serious Play at the Herman Miller’s showroom in Milan. Involving our hands, brain, and hearts, can playing be the right way to lead the change and to address the ever-changing challenges?
A day in the ‘90s, while the electronic games were quickly spreading, in Billund (Denmark) a crucial meeting for the history of one of the most famous companies in the world was taking place. Probably it was a sad and rainy day: Lego’s management was gathering in order to decide who and how much personnel would have been fired to face a growing loss. To let off the steam, one of the managers poured some of the well-known bricks on the table and the people all around started to play.
From that gathering on, new ideas and solutions have been put out such as electric motor, new colors, shapes and interlockings. The company had found a way to brilliantly overcome the challenge.
That is how the method Lego Serious Play was born, as told by Daniela Chiru, Senior Trainer. Hr innovator and Certified Facilitator Lego Serious Play, the last 15th February at the seminar “Managing the iterative uncertainty” at the Herman Miller’s showroom in Milan.
The Lego Serious Play methodology is a powerful tool to help organizations to successfully move into a world that the V.U.C.A. method defines as volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, where the futures is not anymore a projection of the past.
Moreover, uncertainty is due to three issues:
- Contradictions between expectations and reality (“I was sure that…but instead…”)
- Contradictions between behavior and values (if I do something that is against my values, I will feel uncomfortable)
- Social injustice (feeling of helplessness when facing something we find unfair)
In this context, Lego Serious Play foster not only the emotional expression and the development of the social intelligence and empathy but also is a valid tool to predict future scenarios, analyzing problems and working up solutions that can anticipate the changes.
Therefore, Lego Serious Play helps managers to understand the importance of the process as an open-ended experience, where uncertainty can be turned from a source of anxiety to an energetic incentive.
Finally, the brick shape of the Lego imposes, along with the seriousness of the rules, the use of a metaphoric language as a mean of expressing oneself.
“While playing, we become conscious of the unconscious process that always leads our choices”, Daniela Chiru said. “Every experience we live leaves a trace that influences our future choices. Bricks help us to see a service or a product or a situation from a different perspective and to tell the story of the company and its values. If it is true that when we build we respect the given rules, the result it is always part of our free expression of his own creativity”.
Text by Gabriele Masi.
