CASE STORIES - CLIENT EXAMPLES

Personnally, what does diversity mean to you?

We recently asked participants in a LEGO SERIOUS PLAY diversity workshop in the US to build a response to this question. Here is a sample of responses:

Diversity is blending together all kinds of shapes and colors linked together to provide the platform for their lives

There have to be long pieces, short rectangles, slanted pieces, flowers, circles and they can all move separately

Same planet, foundation, many differences, beauty in variety

Diversity may be a concept that drives the balance of thoughts and feelings of all types of people in their daily actions and thoughts

Why care about diversity in business?

Diversity is connecting different types to build a bridge across the organization.

One of the most compelling reasons is the changing face of the workforce of the 21st century.

The shift in demographics of the U.S. labor pool is startling. During 2005, 85 percent of the new workers entering the workforce were women, people of color or immigrants. In 2004, 58 percent of all bachelor-level college degrees were presented to women (compared to 35 percent in 1960), and 1 out of every 2.5 Americans was a person of color (in 1950, 9 out of 10 Americans were white). These increases have continued and are forecasted to grow geometrically through 2050.

What's important to people?

Diversity is the choice and opportunities available at various points in life. The eye represents one's conscience.

What's important to this diverse and multi- faceted pool of workers and what's important to business? From our experiences with addressing diversity through LEGO SERIOUS PLAY we have found no universal answer. What we have found is that;

1) LEGO bricks are a useful tool for thinking about and describing the value of diversity and
2) When co-workers speak with confidence about what really matters, personally, trust among individuals builds and differences become less significant.
3) Using the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY methodology to surface, give voice to, and exchange perspectives about the challenges and benefits of diversity creates a win-win scenario for employees as well as their employers.

Our experience is that a LEGO SERIOUS PLAY diversity session not only provides company leaders with a glimpse into the values of its workforce (real time research), but it also empowers employees to share these views in a non-confrontational environment. The resulting increase in collaboration and productivity and the reduced turnover add immediate value to your bottom line, while minimizing potential liability of discrimination and harassment issues which sometimes result from cultural misunderstandings and disgruntled employees.

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Robert Rasmussen & Associates LLC is a LEGO SERIOUS PLAY Consultancy. We build answers in real- time for challenges related to Strategy, Innovation, Identity, Team Building, Culture and Systems. We are part of global network of consultancies offering services with LEGO SERIOUS PLAY www.rasmus.us

Back to Top Cognitive Fitness for Business; SERIOUS PLAY Gazette, October 2007

Cognitive Fitness for Business

Staying Sharp

Work Hard at Play

The American Heart Association now recommends 30 minutes of moderate exercise five days a week. Not surprisingly, most large companies offer health club memberships as a perk; many provide gyms on-site.

Until recently, however, there seemed to be no guidelines for active efforts you could make to stay cognitively fit. There were no brain exercises - no mental push-ups - you could do to optimize your ability to remember, learn, plan and adapt.

Staying Sharp

Philosopher Henri Bergson: "To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly."

In the November 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review, Roderick Gilkey and Clint Kilts explain how the latest neuroscience research suggests that there is no reason why our brain at 60 can't be as competent as it was at 25. That is not a surprise to business leaders such as Alan Greenspan, Warren Buffett, and Sumner Redstone. These icons and others like them have intuitively understood that the brain's alertness is the result of what they call COGNITVE FITNESS
-a state of optimized ability to reason, remember, learn, plan and adapt enhaced by attitudes, lifestyle choices, and exercises.

The more cognitively fit you are, the better you will be able to make decisions, solve problems, and deal with stress and change.
Cognitive fitness will allow you to be more open to new ideas and alternative perspectives. It gives you the capacity to change your behaviors and forecast their outcomes in order to realize your goals.

Work Hard at Play

"In companies that stifle play, brainpower may actually decrease as it does in children with a failure to-thrive-syndrome, a condition created by experientially deprived environments."

So how does the latest neuroscience research provides guidance on how to become cognitively fit?. One of the most effective ways is to engage in the serious business of play. This requires consciously drawing on our innate ability to play, which lies at the heart of our capacity to imagine and invent.

Our most brilliant thinkers and leaders know this. Albert Einstein, for example, saw his ability to grasp profound insights into the nature of the universe as a result of combinatory play. When asked to describe his experience in developing the theory of relativity, he observed that it began as a "physical sensation" that later became a set of visual images and finally emerged as a written formula that he could begin to describe in words and symbols. This sounds less like an adult's process of analytical reasoning than like a child's creation of a fantasy world, where characters magically pop into being. This led Einstein to conclude "imagination is more important than knowledge."
Link to HBR on-line with complete article

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We wish you Happy Holidays and much success in the New Year.

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Shared Leadership; SERIOUS PLAY Gazette, October 2007

Thriving in Turbulent Times

The Creative Competencies

Shared Leadership

Leadership competencies are expensive and time- consuming to develop and often difficult to access. Trying to develop these competencies through time-consuming readings and exercises has become a multi-million-dollar industry. Most of us were playful and creative in our youth, yet the adult work pressures of demanding schedules, budgets constraints, endless lists of deliverables and family and community pressures have forced most of us to bury our creative impulses to keep pace with the endless treadmill of our commitments.

The Creative Competencies

Traditional models of leadership put a single all-powerful individual in the driver's seat and leave little room for others to access their creativity.

Over eight years, Charles Palus and David Horth, researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership and co-authors of "The Leader's Edge, Six Creative Competencies for Navigating Complex Challenges", observed several hundred individual leaders. The authors found six interrelated creative competencies that helped these leaders to make good decisions in turbulent times:

1. Paying Attention; using multiple modes of perception.
2. Personalizing; tapping into others unique life experiences.
3. Imaging; using all kind of images, such as pictures, stories and metaphors.
4. Serious Play; generating knowledge through exploration, improvisation, experimentation.
5. Co-inquiry; dialoguing within and across community boundaries.
6. Crafting; synthesizing issues, objects, events into meaningful wholes.

The challenge is how can each member in an organization access these elusive creative competencies in "real time", quickly and efficiently, and have their entire work group share in both the joy of creative problem-solving and the responsibility of implementing collective goals.

Shared Leadership

It takes leadership on all levels to thrive in turbulent times.

The LEGO SERIOUS PLAY process is a transparent, social process so both insights (those exciting "aha" moments) and ownership of action steps required to reach your aspirations - are shared. The process evokes and integrates all six creative competencies identified by Palus and Horth instantaneously, in "real time". Because the process involves you and your entire work group, the insights, actions and commitment are owned jointly, by all of you, not just an individual "leader". Let LEGO SERIOUS Play ignite your organization's fire of creative competence, allowing you and your colleagues to bond insights together with actionable steps that will propel you to a new and exciting future.

LEGO SERIOUS PLAY in the news. Download article: "Innovative Team-Building and Staff Retention Strategies"

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The Genius of Groups

The heart of group genius

The secrets of group genius

The group is always smarter than the individual; that's the provocative claim put forward by Keith Sawyer in his entertaining new book, Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration (Basic Books, June 2007, $26.95). Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, tears down some of the most popular myths about creativity and erects new principles in their place. He convincingly argues that creativity is always collaborative-even when you're alone.

Group Genius is filled with compelling stories about the inventions that changed our world: the ATM, the mountain bike, and open source operating systems, among others. In each case, Sawyer shows the true story of innovation: in spite of the "lone genius" myths that always spring up after an invention's success, these important inventions always originate in collaboration.

The heart of group genius

The empowering message is that all of us have the potential to be more creative; we just need to learn the secrets of group genius. That's a message that speaks to the heart of LEGO SERIOUS PLAY

To understand the hidden collaborations that drive exceptional creativity, Sawyer spent fifteen years studying jazz groups, theater ensembles, and everyday conversation. At the heart of Group Genius is Sawyer's fascination with improvisational small groups. Sawyer argues that improvising groups are the key to innovation; participating in them makes each individual more creative, and companies that contain more of them generate more successful innovations.

The implications for LEGO SERIOUS PLAY are obvious - after all, LSP is based on the insight that groups are more insightful than lone individuals. The true benefit of Sawyer's book is his balanced approach; he acknowledges that many groups are dysfunctional, and that the wrong group can make everyone dumber. Sawyer dives deep into group research to show us which kinds of groups will generate maximum innovation. LSP has developed a specific approach to groups, based on real world practice and application, and what's fascinating is that LSP is consistent with Dr. Sawyer's research. One finding that's particularly relevant to LSP is the research showing that groups are more creative when they're led by a trained facilitator.