Category: Lego Serious Play

Have you ever been in a meeting where there are a majority of people not contributing, or worse, not being asked to contribute. Meetings often fall into line with the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule as it is often referred to. This means that 80% of what is said is being said by only 20% of people in the room.

What is a 100/100 meeting?

My mentor Robert Rasmussen, the man who created the method of Lego Serious Play into what it is today, introduced me to the concept of 100/100 meetings when I was training with him. The idea is to counteract the typical business meeting and to break us out of the 80/20 problem mentioned above.

Have you ever been in a meeting and felt unable to speak up or unheard or, worse still sat there wondering why you were even called into this meeting in the first place? I know I have. The problem is that there may be over-assertive types or types who can dominate verbal communication or types that can formulate their thoughts quicker than others in the room which can lead businesses to ignore that each person has their own set of insights and ideas. Unearthing those insights and ideas is a strong component of the Lego Serious Play method.

Robert Rasmussen calls meetings where you give every person the oppurtunityto express their critical thoughts 100/100 meetings because you achieve 100% attention and 100% participation. The advantages of this can lead to:

• A greater abundance of ideas
• Greater engagement from each member of the team
• Efficient decision making
• Lean-in meetings (you can notice that people visibly lean in instead of back away from the table with their arms folded)
• Unlocking of knowledge we may not have known we had

Facilitated workshops and meetings using the methods we employ at MundoNovus can equalise that power in the room and improve engagement within meetings. Through using Lego Serious Play, Applied Improv, Design Thinking techniques and Liberating structures we have found ways to:

• Gain greater participation from all attendees in a meeting
• Get a greater understanding of both the purpose and the outcomes of the meeting throughout the team
• Provide a way forward that is understood and acted upon along with alternative options should the desired outcomes not be met
• And provide a moment of stress reduction by making the work fun to engage with.

Work with us at MundoNovus and we can help you design meetings with positive outcomes that help you achieve your objectives as an organisation, team and individuals. Contact us today.

A huge part of being a successful organisation, whether you are in the public sector or the private sector or a non-profit or charity, is improving productivity and efficiency. It is paramount to have an engaged team or workforce.

I am not a fan of the term workforce as it contains the word force alongside work which, to me at least, brings to mind that work is what one is forced to partake in. This is not the case, there have been moments in my career (as varied as it has been) that I have hit such a flow state that I could carry on working for hours and feeling that only minutes have gone by. This flow state is documented and described best by the Hungarian American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. This is the extreme state of being “in the zone”. It is characterised by a sense of enjoyment in the activity one is engaged in.

As employees and leaders of organisations we can do many things to help our teams to get closer to this flow state or at least to find an element of enjoyment in the activity of work.

Why do we need our teams to enjoy work?

The reasons for needing an engaged team can be varied. The business case would be to cite that an engaged team is likely to have a lower turnover. According to a PWC report companies with highly engaged employees find:

• 33% higher profits
• 51% lower voluntary turnover
• 2.5 x higher performance-related business outcomes

[Source: Engage2Excel]

• 41% lower absenteeism
• 17% higher productivity
• 24% lower turnover (high-turnover organisations)
• 21% higher profitability

[Source: Gallup.com]

Despite discrepancy between sources we can agree that there are positive outcomes to addressing engagement within our teams.

Richard Branson puts it as:

It should go without saying if the person who works at your company is 100 percent proud of the brand and you give them the tools to do a good job, and they are treated well, they’re going to be happy. If the person who works at your company is not appreciated, they are not going to do things with a smile. Effectively, in the end, shareholders do well, the customers do better, and your staff remains happy.

 

So we have the case for engaging our team.

How do we engage our teams?

My take on this is, ask the team. The engagement of the team firstly should involve the team. I see successful companies who have developed over the last ten years or so who are consistently found to be at the top of the UK workplace list published by the Great Place To Work Institute, particularly Propellernet lead by Jack Hubbard. Propellernet’s approach to this is to put at the core of their business a purpose. This purpose attracts people who buy into that purpose but is also shaped by them as the business plan is shaped by the team in an extraordinary way to be focused on fulfilling each employees dream. This might not be the way for every organisation to create engagement but it does shine a light on setting a purpose that is team-driven.

To find a purpose within your organisation that is team-driven and aligns with the vision of the leaders and the mission of the business is not going to occur in a top-down approach. Our approach at MundoNovus would be to create a bespoke workshop or series of workshops using the Lego Serious Play method to find clarity and a solution that everyone in the team can get behind through a shared understanding and 100% contribution.

Five steps towards an engaged workforce

Engagement Multiplier has published 5 steps to creating an engaged workplace and they simplify it well. The steps they have come up with are:

1. Connect your staff to an Engaged Purpose that is written for them. At MundoNovus we would posit creating a purpose that is written by the team as detailed above. Uncover what is important to the individuals and connect that to the work and the overall organisational goals.
2. Measure engagement regularly. Measuring engagement needs to be an ongoing activity so that it is not just a snapshot of one moment in the organisation’s history. A business that was started by a couple of friends had a ritual at the end of each week of having each employee place their ball into one of two bins (the happy bin and the sad/disgruntled bin). This ritual gave an opportunity to take the overriding pulse of the team but also provided a way to start conversations on areas of the work that caused friction or stress.
3. Show that engagement is a permanent focus, not just a passing trend. This is highly important as nothing will be more disengaging than starting an engagement programme one month and abandon it the next. Forming rituals like the one mentioned above can help to keep the momentum up. Making a regular ritual can also increase social capital and as Margaret Heffernan says “Social capital is what gives companies momentum and social capital is what makes companies robust”. A regular ritual offers a moment for teams to come together and build momentum and trust together.
4. Listen to your team on their terms. Set up mechanisms for anonymous feedback as well as non-anonymous feedback so that areas of stress or conflict can be opened for conversation without any one person feeling they are becoming a spokesperson or putting a target on themselves.
5. Take action on quick wins. Small ideas that are quickly and easily implemented can have the greatest impact. An article I wrote on Tiny Noticeable Things (a phrase coined by Adrian Webster) offers further insight into this.

If your organisation is in need of a workshop to examine areas of stress and conflict or to gain ideas from your team then please do not hesitate to contact MundoNovus.

My best,

Mart Gordon