LEGO® Serious Play


Models, metaphors and imagination at work.


The hand is connected to the brain.

When personal desire drives you to learn something using your hands, a complicated process takes over that generates a powerful emotional charge. Using your hands “releases” thoughts that are stuck in your head. What you learn in the process of creating 3-D even 4-D metaphors sinks much deeper into your mind than what you would learn through mere words or two-dimensional imagery. Thoughts that are “built” tend to be expressed in greater detail and are more easily understood.


It’s play with a purpose.

The purpose of LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is to explore the relationships and connections between people and their world, to observe the dynamics both internal and external, to explore various hypothetical scenarios, and to gain awareness of the possibilities. Building landscape models with LEGO bricks, giving them meaning through storymaking, and playing-out various possible scenarios, deepens understanding, sharpens insight, and socially “bonds” together the group who “plays” together.

Why does work need play?

  • Play helps release thoughts that are locked in the head and the heart.
  • You see things differently. Ideas come to life with more concrete detail than ideas expressed through just talking.
  • Discussion during play happens on a more level playing field.
  • The group at play thrives only when everybody participates, so frustrations are reduced, team coherence and direction is more solid.
  • Play lets you experiment, explore and take risks with ideas without fearing consequences that might happen in “real life.”
  • You generate a wider and more imaginative range of possibilities during play than you would during a traditional business meeting.
  • People at play are more present, more engaged, more passionate and better performers.

Why does play work?

  • Play is special: if it’s routine it’s not play.
  • Play is voluntary: it can’t be coerced or mandated.
  • Play is imaginative: you can suspend the rules of the real world.
  • Play isn’t explicitly productive: direct consequences don’t matter.
  • Play is unlimited and delimited: play exists for its own sake and is different from work.
  • Play happens at an agreed upon location: but it can be anywhere.
  • Play has its own rules: it is not constrained by the rules of work.

For More Information…

To find out more about how InsightFactory can help you orgainsation utilise LEGO SERIOUS PLAY® please contact us.

Download the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY brochure