Piecing Things Together

Piecing things together
Jul 5th 2007
From The Economist print edition

What companies can learn from playing with Lego


WHEN recruiting at British universities, PricewaterhouseCoopers, a
consultancy, presents candidates with an unusual exercise. They are
asked to build a tall and sturdy tower using the smallest possible
number of snap-together Lego bricks. Similarly, at Google Games, a
recruiting event first staged by the search-engine giant in April,
candidates are invited to build Lego bridges—the stronger the better.
In each case, the company is trying to convey the idea that it offers
a creative, fun working environment. “It was as much advertising as a
way of trying to get recruits,” says Brett Daniel, a student at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who built the Google Games' weakest bridge.

The eponymous Danish firm, based in Billund, Denmark, has embraced the
corporate use of its coloured plastic bricks. As part of a scheme
called “Serious Play” it is certifying a growing number of
professional Lego consultants, now present in 25 countries. They coach
managers by getting them to build “metaphorical abstractions” of such
things as corporate strategy, says Lego's Jesper Jensen, who runs the
scheme. Hisham El-Gamal of Quest, a management consultancy based in
Cairo that offers Serious Play workshops, says demand for the two-day,
$7,000 courses is booming.

Firms in crisis, such as those besmirched by scandal or in the throes
of a takeover, tend to be most receptive to the idea of Lego
workshops, says François de Boissezon of Imagics, a consultancy based
in Brussels. The results can be embarrassing, particularly for senior
managers. Tsai Yu-Chen of UGene Mentor, a Serious Play consultancy
based in Taipei, says a common exercise is modelling, but not naming,
“the people you hate most”. One chief executive was modelled as a
figure so fat that he blocked a hallway, suggesting he was clogging up
the company.

Lego workshops are effective because child-like play is a form of
instinctive behaviour not regulated by conscious thought, says Lucio
Margulis of Juego Serio, a consultancy in Buenos Aires. This produces
“Eureka” moments: a perfectionist who realises the absurdity of
frustration over an imperfect Lego construction; the owner of a firm
with dismal customer relations who models headquarters as a fort under
siege; or an overbearing boss who depicts his staff as soldiers headed
into battle. Even in the office, it seems, Lego has a part to play.

Full article link at the Economist here.