What LEGO® Serious Play® actually is
It is a fair question to ask before anyone puts money against something with LEGO in the name. Here is a plain-English answer about what the method is, how a session runs, and where it doesn't belong.
A strategy method first, built for hard questions at work.
LEGO® Serious Play® was developed inside the LEGO Group itself, as a way of getting executives to think through hard strategic questions. It's a 3D model-building methodology where building is used as a thinking tool, so people surface ideas through their hands that they can't always get to by talking alone.
It's since been picked up well outside the company that invented it, by organisations including Google, KPMG and Ernst & Young, wherever the usual conversation has stopped working. Brick Spark runs it the same way, as a structured process for a specific kind of hard question.
Think. The facilitator puts one clear question to the room, the question agreed on the discovery call, the one the session exists to answer.
Create. Everyone builds a model that answers it on their own, in a set number of minutes, with no talking. Nobody explains anything until everyone has built something.
Ignite. Each person explains what they built, in their own words, while everyone else listens, and nobody skips their turn. With every model on the table, the discussion catches fire, and the group works with what's now visible (the patterns, the disagreements, the things nobody had said out loud yet) until it reaches a decision.
Building changes who gets to speak.
Michael Fearne, who wrote the practitioner's manual on the method, describes most meetings as skewed towards “the extroverted, analytical, powerful types”: the people who like to talk, and who are comfortable talking first. A LEGO® Serious Play® session flips that structurally rather than by asking people to be braver. Everyone builds an answer before anyone speaks, and everyone explains what they built, so contribution stops depending on confidence or seniority and becomes part of the process itself. It also helps the people who think in pictures, or who are working in their second language, because the model does half the explaining for them.
The bricks are the mechanism that changes who gets to think, speak and be heard, which is also why the method doesn't work as a five-minute add-on to a normal meeting. The building has to come first, properly, for the rest of it to hold.
Where it sits next to team building.
A lot of people find the method while searching for team building, which is fair enough, since it involves LEGO®, it happens away from the desks, and everyone in the room takes part. What separates them is the goal. A team-building activity is built to produce connection: people relax, they get to know each other somewhere other than a meeting room, and that's the outcome it gets judged on. LEGO® Serious Play® is built to produce a shared answer to a question the group has to resolve, and the connection tends to come with it rather than being what the session is designed around.
That difference shows up in what a group leaves with. A session run this way ends with the models still on the table and photographed, and a written list of what was decided with names and dates against it. It's also the fairest test of whether the method suited the job in the first place: if there was nothing the room genuinely needed to decide, there was nothing for the method to do, and an afternoon out would have served everyone better.
Questions that are tangled, contested, or unclear.
The method earns its keep where the topic is complex, there's no single obviously-right answer, and the room needs everyone's input to reach one. Outside that, a well-run meeting is cheaper and faster.
Everyone nods, nobody means the same thing
A direction the leadership team can each describe differently is a decision still waiting to be made properly.
Doubts nobody has said out loud
Risks that everyone privately suspects but nobody raises in the room where it would count.
Two teams, each sure the other is the problem
Where the usual meeting turns into a polite exchange of blame with an agenda attached.
The groups that get the most out of it are the ones where the people in the room hold different pieces of the answer: a leadership team setting direction, a project team at the start or the end of something, or two functions that have to work together and currently aren't. Mixed seniority is fine, and it's where the method does its most obvious work, because building first is what stops the most senior voice setting the direction before anyone else has formed a view. It also doesn't depend on people being comfortable speaking up, which is usually the reason someone goes looking for it in the first place.
See the full run-down of formats (strategy days, kickoffs, retrospectives, resets, cross-team problem solving and rollouts) on the workshops page.
The three times it's the wrong tool.
Here they are before you spend anything.
The decision is already made
If leadership has decided and the session is meant to bring the room along so it feels collaborative, the method will generate an answer rather than deliver the one you wanted, and a room can tell when it's being walked somewhere.
It's one person's call
Some questions are analytical, like which vendor is cheaper or what a compliance requirement says. Those have a correct answer, and a spreadsheet or a specialist will find it faster than a room full of people will.
There's live conflict that needs mediating first
Real grievance or a breakdown in trust needs a considered plan, not a session that opens people up and then sends everyone back to their desks with nothing else in place.
The longer version, with more of the reasoning, is in when a workshop is the wrong answer. If you're not sure which side of the line you're on, the free fit assessment is built to give you an answer either way.
Does it need to be LEGO®, specifically?
The mechanism (build before you talk, everyone explains their own model, nobody skips their turn) is what does the work, and in principle you could attempt a version of it with any building material. In practice, LEGO® Serious Play® is a specific, licensed methodology with a trained-facilitator model behind it. Chris is certified in the method through Pivotal Play, and that training is what you're booking.
Brick Spark runs facilitated sessions using the method. It doesn't deliver LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator certification training, so if that's what you're after, Pivotal Play is who to speak to.
What people ask before they've booked anything.
Do I need to be good at building?
No. Nobody needs LEGO® experience or building skill. The facilitation carries the process. You get a simple prompt and enough bricks to answer it, and the first exercise is designed to take the pressure off within minutes.
How is this different from a regular brainstorm or a whiteboard session?
In a talked session, whoever is confident and senior tends to set the direction and everyone else responds to it. Here, everyone builds an answer before anyone explains theirs, so a position exists before it's been shaped by whoever spoke first. The structure does the work.
Can Brick Spark train us to run LEGO® Serious Play® ourselves?
No. Brick Spark runs facilitated sessions and doesn't deliver LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator certification training. Chris trained and was certified through Pivotal Play; if certification is what you're after, that's who to speak to.
Is LEGO® Serious Play® trademarked?
Yes. LEGO® and LEGO® Serious Play® are trademarks of the LEGO Group, which does not sponsor, authorise or endorse Brick Spark. Chris is a certified facilitator of the method, not a LEGO Group employee or partner.
What do sessions actually produce?
The Ignite Report: a photographed model summary and a written action list with names and dates against it. The workshop formats page has examples of what different sessions are aimed at producing.
How much does a session cost?
Every session starts from AU$2,995 (+GST), with one price backbone that scales with the size of the decision rather than a fixed group headcount. The pricing page has the full inclusions and tiers.
See it against your own room, not just in the abstract.
The workshop formats page shows what a session looks like for a strategy day, a kickoff, a retrospective, or a team that's stopped talking to another team. Or take the free fit assessment first, if you're still weighing it up.