When the outcome of a vision workshop needs to be robust, Sean Blair argues a LEGO® Serious Play® Build Level 3 System model workshop is required

Oxera Data Science practice ask SERIOUSWORK founder Sean Blair to facilitate a workshop for 28 team members. The objective? To develop a ‘Robust Team Vision’.

How does a one day LEGO® Serious Play® System Level Workshop for 28 Data Scientists and Economists sound? A bit nuts really. Happily I just facilitated exactly that for the brilliant team at Oxera Consulting LLP.

Here’s how it went:

After 4 tables groups had built shared models of their ‘Vision’, I facilitated a ‘Meta-Model’ build over lunch so we had one expression of what all 4 tables thought. The Scales of Agreement method we employ gathers peoples likes, questions and concerns about the meta-model.

Then we built agents and landscaped them, then we did a new Build Level 3 Skills build (that to the best of my knowledge is unique in LEGO® Serious Play®).

We hacked the connections parts of System models to identify relationships that were going to be central to achieving the vision.

With my SERIOUSWORK LEGO® Serious Play® Facilitator training hat on, graduates of our trainings know we don’t teach Real Time Strategy because it is flawed.

Instead we teach Insight Stage Design and oh boy were there some rich insights at the end of this workshop in the carefully designed Insights Stage (in part using ORID, Martin Gilbraith!)

I see so few Build Level 3 System Model stories on LinkedIn, further evidence that it is not well taught in most classes? This is my second Build Level 3 assignment in two months.

I want to give a huge shout out to Dr. Sebastian Wernicke, Orlando Milford and David Jevons for inviting me to facilitate this assignment – and giving me permission to put it in my next book (Alison Chevalier!).

I’ll do a graduates-only Lunch and Learn to share the story of how to plan and deliver this kind of assignment.

If you want to learn how to facilitate Build Level 3 professionally and get happy client feedback at the end – I’m running a class in Singapore in October and one in London in November.