Not Child’s Play: Arkansas Businesses Embrace Legos

The Lego Serious Play kits are designed with specific Lego pieces to enhance skills and encourage innovation. (Wayne DePriest)

When Connie Barber had a chance encounter with Lego Serious Play, she didn’t realize what a big impact the little bricks could have on business strategy.

But an interest in the LSP methodology and a love of Lego bricks themselves — Barber’s office is decorated with several elaborate Lego sculptures — led her to bring the playful business methodology to Arkansas.

LSP emerged in the late 1990s in Denmark when the Lego Group was facing declining sales and unproductive strategy meetings. The company partnered with business school professors to develop a structured method using its bricks to facilitate communication and problem-solving.

After finding success with LSP, Lego made the method open source in 2010. Since then, global organizations including Pfizer, Microsoft and Coca-Cola have adopted the methodology for applications like strategic planning and team building.

LSP is a process designed to enhance innovation and business performance. The methodology is based on research that shows hands-on and “minds-on” learning produces a deeper, more meaningful understanding of the world and its possibilities, according to the company’s website.

The methodology aims to support effective communication for everyone in an organization. This is done through a facilitated meeting and problem-solving process in which participants are led through a series of questions that get consecutively closer to a root problem.

Each participant builds their own model in response to the facilitator’s questions using specially selected Lego elements. The models then serve as a basis for group discussion, knowledge sharing, problem-solving and decision-making.

Lego’s website says that the methodology requires participants to use visual, auditory and kinesthetic skills to learn and listen, and it allows all participants to exchange opinions “without the fear of hurting anyone’s feelings.”

“LSP is a method used by organizations to break down barriers of communication about a variety of topics,” Barber said during an interview. “It levels the playing field, because everybody at the table gets to talk. Sometimes really quiet folks have really good ideas that you don’t hear because they don’t get to say them.”

Barber, an assistant professor of information systems at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Business, hosted her first LSP workshop as a certified facilitator Oct. 22, drawing representatives from companies like Dillard’s, Waffle House, Enterprise, CARTI and the American Indian Center to participate.

During the workshop, hosted in a classroom at UA Little Rock, participants built structures with the bricks to illustrate their weaknesses and strengths as a professional, then discussed with a group the meaning of their structures.

Lego’s website says that the “Lego elements work as a catalyst — and when used for building metaphors, they trigger processes that you were probably previously unaware of.”

Though participants are “playing” with Lego bricks, it’s really the structured communication the workshops provide that makes a difference, Barber said.

Workshop participant Wes Lehman, profit center manager at Keathley Patterson Industrial of Little Rock, said the workshop encouraged honest communication.

“If I just sat there and said, ‘What’s your weakness?’ nobody’s going to say that,” Lehman said. “But everybody gave a weakness and represented it with blocks. It made it where people had enough confidence to say what they’re not doing right.”

The goal is for workshop participants to leave with skills to communicate more effectively, to engage their imagination more readily and to approach their work with increased confidence, commitment and insight.

As far as a best application, there really isn’t one, Barber said. The methodology can be applied to a variety of issues.

“There are case studies with Microsoft using it for DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] meetings, onboarding and team cohesion,” Barber said. “It meets so many diverse needs that there’s not one silver bullet application.”

Barber said LSP can lead to successful implementations addressing change management, strategic planning, product development and conflict resolution.

“Even if we don’t end up doing another Lego session, it’s realizing that there are different ways than just directly asking questions — sometimes there might be a better answer,” said Allison Trask, a workshop participant and operations specialist at Keathley Patterson.

Business Application

The certification process to become a LSP facilitator is intensive, requiring hours of online training, participation in live virtual sessions with a “master trainer,” creating and submitting detailed session plans and conducting recorded sessions for review.

Barber said this ensures facilitators can handle group dynamics and apply the method effectively across different kinds of organizations.

Barber said sessions can typically run from 90 minutes to full-day workshops, depending on the complexity of issues being addressed. And corporate retreats are a great time to do a workshop, she said.

“I don’t like to say a session is less than an hour and a half if I’m doing multiple builds,” Barber said. “You have to give your participants time to build and time to talk. You don’t want to cut everybody off.”

But for focused, single-topic discussions, LSP does have a condensed format called “What the Duck” that can be completed in an hour.

Barber also said LSP may not always be the answer to a problem and that companies should use the process like a “targeted solution.”

When should companies use it?

“If you’ve had previous brainstorming sessions and they haven’t been fruitful,” Barber said. “If you’ve been stuck on this topic for a while and haven’t had a breakthrough. Then introducing something like this could be what gets you over that hump, because it’s different. It’s out of the box. People are going to look at it in different ways.”

For businesses interested in implementing LSP, the investment includes purchasing kits and engaging a certified facilitator. Kits typically cost around $500 for 100 sets.

Barber said some professional facilitators can charge up to $10,000, based on session length, complexity and travel requirements. But she said she would not charge nearly that much. Large companies may have an employee trained as a certified facilitator.

And organizations keep the materials after initial facilitated sessions, allowing for continued application of the methodology.

Barber also plans to host LSP workshops each semester at UA Little Rock, connecting students with business professionals, while also introducing organizations to the methodology.

“It’s getting students with business professionals across different industries in the area so that they can practice their networking,” Barber said. “For businesses, this is a free way for them actually participate in a session, learn about it and see if there’s a need that this could fill for their organization.”

Barber has also submitted a Department of Education grant proposal to train 10 faculty members annually to become certified facilitators. The proposal includes research to study the method’s impact on student retention and graduation rates, comparing outcomes between classes that implement LSP and those that don’t.

“We are in a period of change,” Barber said. “Businesses don’t see longevity in people as much as we used to. So we’ve got onboarding needs.

“We’ve got training needs. We’ve got team cohesion issues. Everything’s digital. AI is here. Being able to think outside of the box and being able to hear all of the voices at the table in a low-risk environment can help businesses overcome those types of conflicts or struggles.”

She is aware businesses might be skeptical of using LSP, but her answer to that is simple.

“It’s been in organizations for decades,” Barber said. “It’s tested, it’s been researched, it’s been studied to be effective. It’s giving something new a chance to see if it can benefit the organization.”