History of LEGO(tm) Serious Play

LEGO Serious Play is a concept born out of the LEGO company searching for ways to use LEGO in the business world. Research including flow theory by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, children’s learning by Jean Piaget and learning with artifacts by Samuel Papert led LEGO to embrace the concept and set up a company called Executive Discovery to commercialise LEGO Serious Play.

Basically, the concept allows people to freely think and express themselves as they create. We’ve all been in a meeting where two or three people have dominated and others have been silent. What if we could even out the contribution and here from everyone? LEGO Serious Play allows for that. Besides, who wouldn’t want to have a bit of fun in a work setting?

Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, this positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.[1]

According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate experience in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task[2] although flow is also described (below) as a deep focus on nothing but the activity – not even oneself or one's emotions.

Colloquial terms for this or similar mental states include: to be in the moment, present, in the zone, on a roll, wired in, in the groove, on fire, in tune,centered, or singularly focused.