About Johan Roos
Co-founder of the LEGO Serious Play methodology, Johan Roos’ background is in higher education, mostly in leading business schools. He’s currently the Chief Academic Officer and Professor at Hult International Business School, headquartered in London and Boston, with campuses in SF, Dubai and Shanghai. Before joining Hult, Roos served as a leader and faculty member in several European Business schools as well as a research foundation.
Lego Serious Play and Strategy: An Interview with Co-Inventor Johan Roos
The way we work with strategy is changing – and one of the forerunners leading this change is Johan Roos – the co-inventor of Lego Serious Play, an innovative facilitation methodology that sees thousands of practitioners across the globe and growing.
Leading up to the Drucker Forum in November 2019, where Johan Roos will be speaking and running a workshop, Engage // Innovate and Strategy Tools co-founder Christian Rangen got together with Johan to discuss the evolution of Lego Serious Play since its advent in 2006, and the advancement of strategy today.
By Engage // Innovate
The rapidly changing business landscape over the past decade or so has nudged many companies away from the traditionally rigid annual strategic-planning process. Companies today are rethinking their approach to strategic planning, with many opting for more frequent and more creative ways of getting the dialogue going.
Used across the world in their strategy processes by prominent organizations like Ikea, Samsung, Oxford University, Virgin Atlantic and even the UN, Lego Serious Play is a facilitated meeting, communication and problem-solving process using Lego elements.
Unconventional facilitation techniques such as these are gaining momentum in today’s strategy processes, not simply because they are radical and innovative, but because of how effective they are at creating engagement and tangible results.
Late last year, our team also began experimenting with game-based strategy development through strategy simulations that create an experiential and interactive strategy journey. We brought this to our clients running complex strategy processes to lighten things up – to great success.
While the mechanics were rather different – we see some parallels with the principles behind Lego Serious Play and Strategy Tools’ Strategy Simulations, and decided to get together with co-inventor of Lego Serious Play, Johan Roos for a chat about strategy today.