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
The LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method
(the main tool in our toolkit)
Since 2019, we’ve used the LEGO® method to:
1) facilitate Strategic Foresight workshops for a billion-euro transformation programme
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 improve both their learner experience and team culture
When to use it?
You’ve been to workshops where scenarios weren’t explored, and ideas weren’t rigorously tested
The problem is complex, involving changes to organisational structure, processes and attitudes
Previous solutions have been ineffective
There are multiple competing opinions on the most suitable solution
Interpersonal dynamics inhibit everyone from sharing their perspective
You wish to amplify your team’s creative problem-solving capabilities significantly
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:
Scenario test critical milestones and collaborative interdependencies for project delivery
Scenario test our technology infrastructure to ensure minimal downtime, rapid recovery, and sustained delivery of services
Imagine our organisation in five years and the various initiatives required to move in that direction
Agree on our hybrid working ‘sweet spot' to ensure an adaptive team culture, positive stakeholder relationships and successful project delivery
Enhance cross-functional collaboration by defining our ‘collaborative architecture’ to drive project delivery
Throughout a typical full-day workshop, each person will build (on average) 3 - 6 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
- 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
- Build to Break -
Once the “system” is created, the LEGO® method excels by letting teams test scenarios, identify vulnerabilities, and challenge assumptions
- 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 approx. 75% of the workshop
- Be Brave -
More honest, braver conversations happen when people feel heard, better understand each other’s perspectives, and have confidence that risks and assumptions can be challenged through hands-on experimentation
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. Single or multi-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 and dedicated workforce
IT Business Continuity – Scenario test our technology infrastructure to ensure minimal downtime, rapid recovery, and sustained delivery of services
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 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
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 appreciate
Organisations that help people come together in a meaningful way will be appreciated and noticed within their industry, especially those events linked to CSR and Sustainability Development Goals
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
Playful Designers - www.playfuldesigners.school
Generation Innovation - www.generationinnovation.co
Trusted By
Press Play
We have our own podcast called SEEKING PLAY which you can access in the Our Podcast section of this website
We’ve also been blabbing to anyone who listens to us about the importance of Play, Playfulness, and the LEGO® method!
Future Learning Design Podcast
This is our most recent interview with the wonderful Tim Logan
We cover a range of topics in under 40 minutes, so why not press ‘play’
Product Quest Podcast
Design Thinking 101 Podcast
Systems Innovators Community
This Is HCD Podcast
How Might We...
help teams and departments work better together?
help you simplify operations and strengthen culture?
help you more creatively plan and implement a strategy?
help you create meaningful relationships with citizens, customers and employees?
Whatever your requirements, we can design a series of conversations which generate valuable insights and partner with you to implement them successfully
Thanks for stopping by and remember…..
