Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:

The policies and programs that promote the representation and participation of different groups of individuals

Diversity: The traits and characteristics that make people unique

Equity: Fair treatment, access and advancement for each person

Inclusion: An environment that makes people feel welcome, respected and valued

Both as a professional facilitator and international-school educator, I have supported organisations with the design and implementation of their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategies.

In this article, I will share some of my key ‘lessons learnt’ regarding how purposeful play has added value to these experiences – linked to relevant case studies along the way.

Why you should care about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at your organisation?

There are two key arguments for why you should invest your time, energy and resources into ensuring that your organisation has an effective long-term DEI strategy:

1.The Human Case: The obvious one. When people feel like they belong, they are more engaged when compared with those who don’t (Gallup, 2024). In short, an effective approach to DEI makes for a happier, healthier and more productive workplace – and indeed society.

2. The Business Case: The less obvious one. According to research from McKinsey (2020), companies in the top quartile for ethnic and cultural diversity outperformed companies in the lower quartile by 36% in terms of profitability. Whilst the most gender-diverse organisations are likely to outperform their least gender-diverse competitors by as much as 48%

How LEGO Serious Play can help to develop an effective long-term DEI Strategy

Here I will lean on a number of different case-studies to share how you can use LEGO Serious Play to support your organisation’s DEI Strategic planning.

A Framework for Success

This is a simple three-phase framework that I use when supporting organisations with their strategic planning:

 

Phase I: Have a clear aspirational vision

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”

 

When it comes to your organisations DEI strategy, it is important articulate a vision for your future: This will inform where you are heading and galvanise your team around your ‘direction of travel’

LEGO Serious Play is a fantastic visioning tool as it offers everyone the opportunity to contribute to the co-construction of this ‘direction of travel’. The method’s democratic nature means that all perspectives, voices and ideas are heard. And whilst every idea might not be directly represented in the final version, they will have all informed this end-outcome.

When facilitating a vision-setting workshops, we often begin by asking participants to build their current reality first – before then modifying this reality to represent their aspirational vision.

 

Beginning with the current reality has two key benefits:

1. It allows participants to share what they think love about the existing system, ‘warts and all’. This opportunity to acknowledge the here and now allows participants to outline the nature and scale of some of the challenges that lie ahead

2. Comparing the current reality with the aspirational vision makes what needs to change to improve the institution’s DEI strategy visible and explicit.

It is the iterative nature of using LEGO that makes this constructive and reconstructive approach to vision setting possible.

Using physical manipulatives to explore DEI has other benefits. By asking participants to first build their responses, we introduce a third point. Participants cease to talk about themselves or their experiences, instead talking to and about their models.

 

This shift of focus is significant. We call it decoupling: the separation of the idea and the person.

It means participants tend to be more candid in what they share. The space between a person and their model creates a psychologically safe ‘buffer’. Participants talk about and reference their model as a third point – free from the direct and personal judgement or conflict that might surface in a one-to-one discussion.

Phase II: Identify key strategic commitment

Visions can be powerful, galvanising ideas that unify communities around a shared sense of purpose. Alone, they can also be ‘soft’ statements that lack substance.

“It’s all very good knowing where we want to go, but how do we get there?”

We encourage organisations to use their aspirational visions to identify a strategic commitments that will drive their effective long-term DEI strategy. These articulate the changes that the organisation wants to make.

To help organisations articulate their strategic commitments, we sometimes encourage participants to respond to their vision by constructing the core values they identify as being at its heart.

 

Having built and shared these core values with their peers, teams an vote to identify the most important for their effective long-term DEI strategy.

For a more robust approach to identifying strategic commitments, we encourage organisations to engage with their vision at a systems level; considering agents that can influence it – for better or worse. They then consider the relationships between these agents and the vision; representing these with physical connections in model-form.

Futures Thinking tools allow teams to then animate their system; shaking key agents in response to scenarios to identify ripple effects, feedback loops and leverage points.

Through making systems visible, teams can see the strategic commitments they should be making emerge on the table in front of them. It is a powerful tool for ensuring that their vision – far from being a fluffy statement – is directly informing key decisions linked to DEI.

Phase III: Plan for Action

The final phase can be summed up in a simple three word sentence

“So, now what?”

This phase is the catalyst to start making these visions a reality. We encourage participants to consider actions that they will take as a result of the work they have done. Most importantly, we adopt strategies to make them accountable for these proposed actions.

This could mean writing one small action you will take next week on a card, before then giving it to a colleague in preparation for a progress call in 7 days time. Or complete a planning matrix as a team; generating as many actionable ideas as possible before collectively deciding which of these actions would add most value.

These commitments to action help to build the momentum that drives and sustains long-term change.  The success of effective long-term DEI strategies are often rooted in an organisation’s capacity for change. Change in mindsets. Change in attitudes. Change in behaviours. All of which can be difficult.

Regular small wins are essential to motivate people to continue on this journey.

Curious to learn how we can help your organisation develop an effective long term DEI strategy?

If you are curious to learn how you can use purposeful play to help develop your organisation’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy, why not reach out today. You can contact us directly, or schedule a call with Liam using this hyperlink