"Wait, You Want Me to Bring LEGO Bricks to a Board Meeting?"
What would you think if I told you that I facilitate strategic planning sessions with LEGO bricks?
"Isn't that for kids?" Or maybe, "Are we really going to play with toys while discussing our budget crisis?"
LEGO® Serious Play® isn't about playing with toys. It's a research-backed facilitation method grounded in the science of how people actually think, connect, and create. It's about using your hands to build what your brain is trying to articulate. After years of working in and with nonprofits as an interim ED, a board member, and a consultant, I can tell you it does something traditional meetings can't.
What LEGO Serious Play Actually Is
LEGO Serious Play is a structured process where participants build 3D models to represent ideas, challenges, or goals. Everyone builds and everyone shares, which means everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute. There's no one person dominating the conversation, and no one checking email while pretending to listen.
The method uses specific LEGO sets (yes, there are actual LSP kits with pieces designed for this work), paired with questions to guide participants through building physical representations of complex ideas or concepts. You're not building a house or a spaceship. You're building things like what's blocking your team from success or what your organization's mission means in practice.
Why It Works
Traditional meetings tend to reward whoever talks first, loudest, or longest. We've all been in a room with the board member who monopolizes every discussion. Or the staff member who never speaks up but has brilliant ideas. Or the executive team that talks in circles about abstract concepts nobody can quite understand.
LEGO Serious Play changes the entire dynamic. When you're building with your hands, different parts of your brain engage. The physical act of construction activates creativity and insight in different ways. I've watched quiet program managers build models that help reframe strategic discussions, and I've seen dominant board chairs forced to wait their turn while everyone else shares first.
The method works because people aren't just talking about ideas. They're giving abstract concepts a visible structure in a way that conversation alone can't.
The silent building time also gives people who need more processing time a chance to formulate their thoughts before speaking, rather than being expected to respond on the spot. The physical models hold your ideas for you, so you're not trying to juggle abstract ideas in your head while also listening and tracking the conversation. And since everyone takes a turn, you don't have to guess when it's appropriate to jump in the way you might in a normal meeting. For anyone who's ever felt like traditional meetings weren't designed for the way their brain works, LSP offers a different way.
How LEGO Serious Play Helps Nonprofits
After observing and facilitating sessions with different social service organizations, I've seen a few areas where LSP makes a real difference.
The biggest one is team and mission alignment. I worked with an organization where everyone said they were "living the mission." But when we had each person build what the mission meant to them, we ended up with wildly different models. One person's mission was all about direct service. Another's focused on advocacy. A third built something about community partnerships. Everyone genuinely believed they were living the mission. The problem was, they weren't all living the same mission. This led to tension when some staff thought others weren't pulling their weight. They were all working hard, just toward different interpretations of the same words. When we built a shared model together, people started to see how their different perspectives came from different experiences, both personal and professional, and began to find some common ground.
It also changes how teams interact day-to-day. Ask your team to build "the value you bring to this organization." Some people build bridges and others may build tools. Someone might build a foundation. These aren't just fun metaphors. They reveal how people see themselves and their roles. One prompt I've used is "Build your organization at its best," and the models show what people are aiming for and where the gaps are. When someone builds literal walls between departments, that's worth discussing. When multiple people independently build similar obstacles, you've identified a pattern that needs attention.
Another area is organizational strategy. Nonprofits are great at describing problems, but they can struggle with visualizing solutions. LSP forces you to move from an abstract strategy to a concrete representation. When you ask a team to build "what success looks like in three years," you get specifics, and when you ask them to build the obstacles in the way, it can help blind spots surface early. The models make both connections and disconnects visible, and you can literally see how changing one piece affects others. It's particularly effective for program design because you can test ideas in physical form before committing resources.
Inside a Session
Here's how it works when I facilitate a LEGO Serious Play session with a nonprofit team:
We start with a warmup. Everyone builds a tower to get comfortable with the bricks and the process. The faster everyone gets their hands building, the quicker the hesitation breaks.
Then I pose a question or challenge, and everyone builds silently for three to five minutes. Individual building comes first, before any group influence. Your idea gets to exist before anyone else weighs in.
Each person shares their model and explains its meaning. You might have 30 seconds or three minutes, depending on the group size and session goals. Everyone shares. No exceptions.
Finally, we identify themes and patterns together. Sometimes we build shared models. Sometimes we connect individual models to see relationships. We always end with reflection and commitment to specific actions.
The whole process can run from two hours for a focused session to a half-day for deeper strategic work. Larger groups may get split into smaller teams and then report back. Too many voices around the table can dilute the impact, but too few and you miss the range of perspectives.
Why This Matters in the Nonprofit World
We talk about collaboration, but often find it hard to make it happen. We talk about systems change but struggle to actually see the systems we're working within. We say we value every voice but default to whoever speaks up first or loudest.
LSP addresses these challenges directly. It's especially powerful when organizations are in periods of growth or transition, or facing complex community dynamics. The more abstract or multifaceted the challenge, the more valuable it becomes to build it out physically.
How to Know If It's Right for Your Team
LSP works particularly well in situations like:
- Strategic planning sessions or annual retreats where you need fresh thinking
- Leadership transitions, when alignment is critical
- Team rebuilding after burnout or major change or rapid growth
- New program design or organizational rebranding
- Any time you've got voices that dominate and voices that disappear
One note about buy-in: in my experience, people who've been talked over in traditional meetings appreciate having a different way to contribute.
Building What's Possible
LEGO Serious Play isn't magic. It's not right for every situation. But when you need real participation and concrete results from a strategic discussion, it does something a traditional meeting can't. LSP can show you what's really going on in your organization, and what's possible when everyone has a voice.
If your next retreat or planning session needs something different, let's talk about building it together.
LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is a registered trademark of the LEGO Group, which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this content.
Photo by Jeff Smith, taken during a LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® session.