How Lego Serious Play supports team building through the creative co-production

This case study paper will describe the process and underlying theory behind the use of Lego Serious Play (LSP) being used to develop a shared vision and real time strategy for the Translating Evidence to Enhance Maternal-newborn care: Knowledge Translation (TEEM-KT) team. LSP draws on a range of theories around reflection, externalising thoughts and making tangible alongside the actual building of metaphors as a means of sharing and developing complex ideas. These theories will be discussed further in the paper in light of the authors previous work around knowledge mobilization and particularly creative practices in knowledge mobilization. In the case study described, there were 20 participants including the team lead and Research Fellow and the session was delivered by two LSP trained facilitators. The methods were drawn from the LSP canon with preliminary skills building followed by a series of questions prompting participants to build and share. This process explored personal then collective perspectives about the current team then a vision for 3 years in the future. Short evaluation questionnaires were filled in before and after the session by all participants, asking about expectations and then how the workshop had addressed those expectations. Other results were in the form of the individual and shared models that were created and described by the teams. Whilst LSP has been used extensively in the Business world, the authors feel it has much to offer in the world of health, not only in team and strategy building but in the broader endeavours of knowledge mobilization. It is an example of creative co-production and addresses and evidences many of the challenges of coproduction identified in the health literature.