When I tell friends and family that I use LEGO Serious Play to help people run more engaging and innovative meetings and workshops, they quite often say something along the lines of…
“So you sit in the corner of the office and build LEGO pirate ships all day?”
After a good chuckle and a quick explanation of what LEGO Serious Play is and how it works, the questions often turn to what sort of LEGO do I use? And can I steal my kids LEGO and use that?
The short answer is YES! You can steal your kids LEGO and it will work for LEGO Serious Play. You just need a good variety of pieces and a couple of mini figures and that should allow you to build models to represent ideas, opinions and experiences (the core of LSP).
A longer answer is random LEGO is ok but there are special kits designed by LEGO that are better for LEGO Serious Play. They provide a great mix of pieces to help promote the creativity and insights the method is capable of bringing out.
The best kit to start with is funnily enough called: “The LEGO Serious Play Starter Kit”. The image above is of that kit. It has 214 pieces which is perfect for one person. It has some basic bricks, but a lot of unique pieces like a ladder, wheels, string connectors, gold bars, propellers, windows, Duplo blocks, grass and castle turrets. All designed to help with a wide range of business metaphor and story.
It also comes with a handy booklet introducing you to the method and a few preliminary activities. To learn the full method and all it’s techniques, activities, outcomes and to run it for a group it’s best to attend a LEGO Serious Play training course. But the booklet is great for getting you started and seeing if LSP is right for you and your organisation.
The Starter Kit can be purchased here on the LEGO site: LEGO Serious Play Starter Kit.
There are other LEGO Serious Play Kits for more advanced uses, which we might go over in a future post. But for now enjoy your Starter Kits and when that friend asks if you’re building a pirate ship you can say “No I’ve got SPECIAL LEGO that I use for my work!”