Lego play to build business minds

On December 7, the school is planning a “one-day hands-on minds-on” conference, Play for Outstanding Results, at which it will advocate the use of LEGO SE RIOUS PLAY and Games Science within organisations to unlock knowledge and creativity to improve performance and solve problems. The conference will be held at the Movie Towne Banquet and Conference Centre, Audrey Jeffers Highway, Port-of-Spain.

Adi Montas, marketing executive at the Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business and a trained LEGO SE RIOUS PLAY facilitator said LEGO SE RIOUS PLAY is an innovative, experimental process designed to enhance innovation and business performance. In fact, since most adults put down their LEGO blocks, LEGO has moved on, evolved and added new pieces and a whole concept of “Games Science” has been developed around the ideas of applying “game mechanics and game design techniques” to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals and promote organisational efficiency.

Montas said the conference will be exposing participants to unconventional ways of improving performance in organisations and game science is the use of various games to get all members of the team in a company to buy into solving a problem.

“I can give a very simple instruction such as build a tower using just two types of blocks and you will see, even if there are twenty persons in the room, we will have twenty different towers. What that brings to the table is how in a team we will have different perspectives.” She said this is what happens normally in organisations when instructions are given or received: each person interprets and will have a specific perspective on that instruction. She said LEGO SE RIOUS PLAY brings together all those perspectives into one aligned concept.

Montas said it immediately improves active listening because in a regular meeting about half the audience is usually not giving their full attention to the presentation but in LEGO SE RIOUS PLAY all participants must give their full attention to all their colleagues in order to participate in any task “because we are working with metaphors. We are thinking with our hands and when we do this we are activating two sides of our brain - that doesn’t usually happen in a regular meeting.

And this happens naturally, we all like to play so just by doing this exercise we are igniting things in our brain that we don’t usually do.” She said that when people try to build something with their hands, they are activating both sides of their brains and it has been scientifically proven that when people are using their hands to put something together communication is clearer and it even makes the presentation of the model to the group easier because it removes some of the fear of making the presentation.

She said the LEGO company is aware of the versatility of the bricks and has separate divisions such as LEGO Education which deals with pre-schools, schools and trying to improve communication skills for children and managing emotional intelligence - how to express their emotions.

She added that the concept of LEGO SE - RIOUS PLAY is about ten years old and was developed by Robert Rasmussen, who once led the LEGO Education division and she was fortunate to have been trained by him.

Montas is only one of three experts who will conduct the conference on December 7. It will feature Executive Coach and trained LEGO SE - RIOUS PLAY facilitator, Guillermo Miotti and Dr. Sylvester Arnab, Lead of the Disruptive Learning Lab at Coventry University (UK), who is also a trained LEGO SE RIOUS PLAY facilitator.