2 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ME:
I LOVE STORIES
AND BEING REBELLIOUS
And both of these play quite nicely into my love of LEGO® Serious Play®. Which is all about stories (and their power). And let’s face it you need to be a bit rebellious to bring LEGO to work for a serious purpose.
But I’ve jumped ahead to the end of the story. Let’s go back to the beginning…
Hi! I’m Michael Fearne. I was a child of the 70s & 80s, a real dreamer. How could I not be, born in the same year as the first Star Wars movie… Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia were my baby sitters. I grew up on imagination and possibilities. And a healthy dose of rebelliousness.
Fast forward to my early career, a young graduate at a Big 4 Consulting Firm. From the vantage point of inexperience I saw battle lines being drawn.
On one side the oppressive forces of rigid corporate structure. Decades, even centuries of oppression through out dated cultural norms, archaic systems, convoluted processes, apathy, frustration, constraints. I saw good people wanting to make a contribution but getting lost.
On the other side a small band of rebels. A handful of visionaries that knew the only way for these organisations to succeed (and people to feel fulfilled) was to fight this rigid corporate structure and do things differently, innovate.
Early on I faced a couple of key questions. Questions many of us face at some point in our careers.
Which side are you on?
Do you accept the system or look to change it?
I chose to change it. Be a rebel, an innovator. I left the confines of that rigid corporate world and started my own business. The best way for me to impact the world was not from within one company. But by finding those rebels, those innovators in each company and helping them.
At first it was through teaching managers and executives the skills they needed to think differently. Facilitating workshops on change, innovation and strategy moved the dial a little bit, but then in 2013 I discovered this…
It’s exactly the weapon this rebellion needs. It’s innovative and playful. Creating new ideas, new perspectives and renewed engagement.
A child’s toy in a business world. A toy renowned for imagination, creativity and expression. LEGO® Serious Play® puts structure and process around the amazing LEGO brick and turns it into a powerful business tool.
At it’s core this method helps people tell stories.
Stories of identity and the past.
Stories to make sense of the present.
Stories to build a shared future.
And stories to help make that change.
At first I tried a small LEGO Serious Play activity here and there in my workshops. And I saw the power of it.
“Everyone needs to be doing this” I thought. So I became a Trained LEGO® Serious Play® Facilitator and started a business solely focused on LEGO Serious Play. And that’s what I’ve been doing since 2013.
I started experimenting with workshops. Clients would hire me to come in and run a session using the LEGO Serious Play method and alongside achieving the aim, I would experiment with what worked best. What activities worked best and in what order; what were the best questions to ask; what LEGO worked best; what were the best ways to capture information and follow up on workshops, drive the change.
After many workshops I’ve honed down the process to find what works. What makes this method amazing!
But I realised running individual workshops wasn’t enough. I needed to get this weapon into as many hands as possible. This is the thing that can make that change. Engage people, make them think differently, view the system a different way, make work fun and effective.
I started running training programs in Melbourne, Australia. Intensive 3-day courses to teach people everything. I still run those today, but the impact needs to be wider. More people need to know about this and what it can do.
That’s where the Online Certification in LEGO® Serious Play® Course comes in. The culmination of over a decade of facilitating experience and many intensive years buried in the LEGO Serious Play method. All distilled down to the key steps people need to know to engage people, excite them, allow them to have a voice, share their story and reach deep inside themselves for awesome ideas and how to implement them. And ultimately to change the system.
We all know how the original Star Wars ended up. The rebels won. So the question is… which side are you on?
