Creative Connections

We’re not consultants that tell your team the answer to their problems. Our role is to create an environment that empowers them to communicate effectively and think creatively to optimise processes, resolve problems, strengthen culture and delight customers.

Whilst our focus is on process improvement, we also help teams realise the value of their roles, the importance of their relationships, and their sense of relatedness.

Creative Connections Worldwide

We understand that not every team can meet in person, so we’ve designed a LEGO® ‘Play Pack’ to maximise their creative problem-solving capabilities no matter where they are in the world. We post a Play Pack to every team member and take the team through a series of creative problem-solving exercises to improve project delivery, strengthen stakeholder engagement, and optimise team and customer experience. If you’re a manager of a distributed or hybrid team, you will not find a better way to maximise your team’s creative potential while strengthening your team’s culture

Creative Kitchens

We also use the Play Pack for one-to-one coaching. Our coaching differs from traditional coaching because we use Design Thinking, Systems Thinking, and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® to help our coachees amplify their creative problem-solving skills. This unique offering will help mid to senior-level managers reduce the complexities of their roles by helping them literally see what they are thinking whilst turning their kitchen table into a map of their workplace

We support clients with a mixed toolkit of:

Service Design
Strategic Foresight
Complexity Thinking
LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®
Soft Systems Thinking

Some of our clients

The LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method

(the main tool in our toolkit)

When to use it?

1) The problem is complex, involving changes to organisational structure, processes and attitudes

2) Previous solutions have been ineffective

3) There are multiple competing opinions on the most suitable solution

4) Interpersonal dynamics inhibit everyone from sharing their perspective

5) You wish to amplify your team’s creative problem-solving capabilities significantly

Since 2019, we’ve used the LEGO® method to:

1) facilitate Strategic Foresight workshops for billion-euro transformation programmes

2) coach teams, departments and entire organisations to embed Service Design practices

3) bring clients and their customers/citizens together to co-create better relationships and service delivery

4) help teams grappling with complex work environments (and interpersonal tensions) to work better together so they can deliver more customer-centred products and services

5) help teams design better stakeholder engagement practices

6) help academic departments better understand and articulate the value proposition of its new courses and the various segments of learners they need to communicate to

What is the LEGO® method?

At its core, it's about participants using LEGO® to talk less, listen more and think creatively to resolve problems more efficiently as a team

Workshops are designed so that participants listen for 75% of the time, which ensures more dominant personalities do not occupy the majority of the team conversation

Workshops are structured around a primary objective, such as

Develop industry-leading software by creating ‘Agile Interactions’ between cross-functional teams

or

Create our team vision, values and behaviours since our transition to hybrid work

Throughout a typical full-day workshop, each person will build (on average) 6 - 8 LEGO® objects (as we use many other creative exercises). All the LEGO® objects created by the entire team are then used to create a system landscape

This landscape provides participants with a holistic view of their role, their colleagues’ role, their team, their department, and even the entire organisation and its external stakeholders, such as customers or citizens (and Mother Nature!)

This unique perspective then ensures the team can collaborate highly creatively to resolve the challenges identified within the system landscape

Why is it effective?

- Think Creatively -

We must think creatively to adapt to an increasingly complex and uncertain business environment. Traditional workshops lead to traditional thinking

- Listen To Learn -

Due to such complexity and change, managers can’t have all the answers. Listening to learn ensures everyone will have listened for 75% of the workshop

- See The System -

When people take a holistic perspective, they shift their focus from their role so they appreciate the value other colleagues, teams and departments bring

- Be Brave -

More honest, braver conversations happen when people feel heard and better understand each other’s perspectives. Establishing Psychological Safety reduces defensive, siloed thinking and leads to robust strategic decisions

Our Services

1. Building Your Creative Cadence

While we design one-off workshops, we primarily partner with clients for three to six engagements delivered over one to two years (e.g. a workshop every four months). The main aim of this ongoing partnership is for your team to learn Service Design, Systems Thinking and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® practices to:

Strengthen cross-functional connections
Optimise employee and customer experience
Develop a highly creative and dynamic culture

Working cross-functionally, your team will generate ideas to improve their employee and customer experience and identify experiments to test when back in the workplace. This iterative process fosters a Creative Cadence where change is gradual and sustainable.

Along your journey, we provide one-to-one coaching to key staff members identified as "Change Catalysts". We also train them in the LEGO® Serious Play® method so they can embed creative problem-solving rituals into your organisation

2. One-two day workshops

Our in-person and online workshops engage and empower your team to talk less, listen more and think creatively to build trust, understand alternative perspectives and increase team collective intelligence

Whilst our workshops have a team-building focus, they primarily help your team solve specific problems and generate actionable outcomes such as:

Customer Experience & Sales - Create an industry-leading end-to-end customer experience that boosts sales and customer retention

Employee Experience & Brand Differentiation - Create an end-to-end employee experience that attracts and retains a diverse, dedicated workforce unrivalled in our industry

Project Delivery & Risk Mitigation - Scenario test several possible risks that may affect key milestones and collaborative interdependencies during project delivery

3. Design Research

During Design Research, we work with your citizens, patients, employees or customers to understand their motivations, needs, challenges and the contexts in which they interact with your service

Where appropriate, our qualitative (face-to-face) research will utilise the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method instead of more traditional focus groups or interviews. This research method uncovers valuable insights by helping people feel more comfortable during the conversation, leading to a deeper understanding of their lived experience

This qualitative data, coupled with your existing quantitative data, helps to provide a deeper and more holistic understanding of how the people important to you experience your service

Having conducted our research, we then generate an ‘Alignment Roadmap’, so you successfully turn those insights into actionable outcomes

4. Process Improvement

During this in-person or online workshop, colleagues from different departments work together to outline the various people, processes, policies, technologies, success metrics and hand-overs associated with each stage of the citizen, patient, customer or employee journey with your service

Once an end-to-end view is created, the team then works together to eliminate pain points which exist for the people important to you and each department which supports them

The blueprint can remain on your office wall so the group can continue to use it as a collaboration tool; plus, we can create a digital version for you. We can also continue to partner with you to ensure the successful implementation of the necessary changes

5. Co-creation Event

Covid-19 meant that in-person events quickly ceased, but as the world reemerged, such events are going to be a highly valuable way to reconnect with your clients or citizens

Our highly interactive events ensure your team has more meaningful interactions with customers or citizens, whether that’s to better understand and solve challenges within their daily lives or to refine aspects of your products and services

These events also generate engaging and unique content that your marketing and communications department will greatly appreciate

Organisations that help people come together again in a meaningful way will be appreciated and noticed within their industry, especially those events linked to CSR and Sustainability Development Goals

6. LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Online Training

Our training is now available online for those within an organisational setting and third-level education

Our In-house training is also still available

Organisational Innovators

Learn how to apply the LEGO method plus elements of Service Design and the Soft Systems Method to your organisation

Click me!

Third-level Innovators

Learn how to apply the LEGO method plus elements of Service Design and the Soft Systems Method to the learning environment

Your students will thank you!

Click me!

Supporting Ireland’s Creative Future

The How Might We team have also helped thousands of students learn Creative Problem Solving and Design Thinking through the LEGO® Serious Play® method.

We’ve done this as Creative Partners for:

The Big Idea - www.thebigidea.ie

Narrative Four - www.narrative4.ie

Playful Designers - www.playfuldesigners.school

Generation Innovation - www.generationinnovation.co

Trusted By

About Us

Dr Jane Hession

Design Researcher | Strategic Facilitator

I’m a researcher at heart. I love to learn how various life experiences shape the decisions and behaviours of others

I’m passionate about nurturing female entrepreneurship and helping organisations foster gender equality and diversity in the workplace

My book ‘Women In The Modern Workplace’ examined how family, finance, networking and mentoring affect a woman’s decision to establish a business. My PhD. analysed the degree to which Polish entrepreneurs leverage the business support services provided by the Irish Government

I’ve consulted with various Irish Government agencies and for five years managed the business faculty of a college based in Sydney. I have a passion for creating mindful, progressive learning environments and embedded Positive Psychology and design thinking throughout the entire business faculty

As a LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Facilitator, I use gameplay in all of my facilitation work with a focus on incorporating fun and creativity into teamwork

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old;
we grow old because we stop playing”

— George Bernard Shaw

Ronan Healy

Service Designer | Strategic Facilitator

I’m guided by the belief that Play is at the centre of human-centred design. I believe the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method is invaluable to help teams visually conceptualise complex problems and creatively identify a range of solutions

I have over a decade of director and senior leadership experience in a broad range of industries. Through those experiences, I have learnt that, whilst formal organisational structure, processes, and policies are important, it is the informal, interpersonal, relational that is the strategic fabric

Since my Masters in 2004, I continue to learn and apply a range of principles and practices from Complex Responsive Processes, Creative Problem Solving, Service Design and Soft Systems Thinking. I'm a Certified Scrum Master, Certified LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Facilitator and Ireland’s first (and only) trainer of Certified LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Facilitators

My passion for teaching others innovative methodologies and frameworks led me to consult and lecture for numerous years in Service Design, Design Thinking, Jobs-To-Be-Done, Google Design Sprints and the Lean Startup Approach

“Play is our brain’s favourite way of learning”

— Diane Ackerman

Deborah Nolan

Systemic Psychotherapist | Play Therapist

I’m a Systemic Psychotherapist and Play Therapist with a passion to help others flourish through systems thinking or more specifically Human Systems Therapy

I love to help leaders understand relational trauma and how it manifests within a team and between departments so everyone can function at a greater level and nurture a culture of creative growth

I’ve worked with some of the major public sector agencies; Barnardos, Tusla, Brothers of Charity, CAHMS, Legal Aid Boards to provide training and consultancy for managers, teams and families

As a Play Therapist, I value how LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® reveals subconscious group dynamics in a supportive way. It allows safe vulnerability and a chance to tap into playful creativity

“Play is the only way the highest
intelligence of humankind can unfold”

— Joseph Chilton Pearce

Nicola Le Gear

Senior UX Designer | Graphic Facilitator

I’m a Senior User Experience Designer with a passion for landscape painting (and happy to say I’ve sold a number of my pieces!)

I was Head of User Experience at RBS Insurance (now Direct Line Group), where I built and led a team of User Experience and Customer Experience professionals responsible for the transactional web presence for Direct Line, Churchill, Privilege, Green Flag, and partners (Sainsbury's, Nationwide Building Society, Prudential, RBS, and Natwest). I drove a multi-channel approach to maximise sales and customer value through evaluation, optimisation and customer feedback

I’m excited to bring my UX experience to How Might We, plus also bring my paintbrushes and Sharpies as a Graphic Facilitator