Playing like a child - using Lego

There was an article in the Economist on the 5th July which i'd saved as it highlighted something that I read in Scandinavia about 7 years ago about how firms in Denmark were using Lego to help their managers become more creative.

Now I understand that PWC use it with their graduates as do Google Games.

In each organisation, the company is trying to convey the idea that it offers a creative, fun working environment.

Lego have set up a division called Serious Play and has consultants who charge $7k for a two day course. . The article highlights that "they coach managers by getting them to build “metaphorical abstractions” of such things as corporate strategy."

Firms in flux, tend to be most receptive to the idea of Lego workshops. One Taiwanese consultant has an exercise is modelling, but not naming, “the people you hate most”. Apparently one chief executive was modelled as a figure so fat that he blocked a hallway, suggesting he was a major obstacle within the company.

Lego workshops are effective because child-like play is a form of instinctive behaviour not regulated by conscious thought,
Lego believes that this produces “Eureka” moments such as the article highlights " 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."

Could we perhaps utilise Lego bricks to show where our knowledge management initiatives in terms of technology or people relations might be improved. A thought for the future of KM and also as a means of illustrating the stories where we get people to share knowledge.