Today I had an interesting meeting with Johan Roos, the Director of Imagination Lab Foundation. Imagilab is an independent, non-profit research institute founded in 2000 and operating from Lausanne, Switzerland.

Its raison d’être is to develop and spread actionable ideas about imaginative, reflective and responsible organizational practices. The Foundation’s underlying philosophy is to value imagination as a source of meaningful responses to emergent change and play as an effective way to draw on this human capacity.

Johan's point is that strategy should be practised in ways that fuel our minds by engaging our bodies in new ways: "When we do strategy rather than think strategy, we engage our senses so that we describe, create and challenge what we know in ways that pure intellectual reasoning cannot". Johan's work is directed towards developing ideas and activities that can help leaders transform strategy into a more imaginative, reflective and responsible practice. For that matter, he used for instance interactive drama or lego play.

I was impressed by the word they did with LEGO, it's called Serious Play. Some examples are here:

LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is an innovative, experiential process designed to enhance business performance. Based on research that shows that this kind of hands-on, minds-on learning produces a deeper, more meaningful understanding of the world and its possibilities, LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is an efficient, practical and effective process that works for everyone within an organization. Participants come away with skills to communicate more effectively, to engage their imaginations more readily, and to approach their work with increased confidence, commitment and insight.