The “Duck Challenge” is a fun way to leave a long-lasting impression on the participants of your next meeting or team event. At the same time, you will enter the diverse world of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® in a lightweight way. Get to know LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® as a method for creative meetings, improved team performance and solution-oriented thinking.
When preparing project kick-offs, workshops or even team meetings, the same question often pops up. How can we integrate an entertaining, exciting part that stimulates the participants to interact and at the same time provides insights for further collaboration? And this is exactly where an application of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® comes into play – in the truest sense of the word.
With LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, ideas, common goals or concepts are built with Lego bricks in especially facilitated workshops. The visualization of often abstract ideas and contexts brings a different dynamic to dialogues compared to meetings without a visual representation. The LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method was developed by LEGO®. Specially trained LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitators lead the workshops.
Six bricks and the way to the duck
The preparation effort is minimal, and the rules are very simple and completely identical, regardless of whether you want to use the “Duck Challenge” with 10 or with 100 participants. Each participant gets his own set of LEGO® bricks, which always contains the same six bricks. The only work assignment for the participants is: Build a duck from these six bricks in two minutes. 3, 2, 1… and off you go.
Some participants will ask themselves (and might even be at bit embarrassed) if this really has to be done now, while the first ones already start building diligently. But it doesn’t take long: in our experience after two minutes, every participant has built a duck, without exception.
By the way, the exercise also works well in video conferences and is thus perfectly applicable in the current time. In addition, many participants are very pleased when they receive a small surprise package in advance by mail with the stones.
Icebreaker with learning effect
You will notice that it is tremendous fun and inspiring to build something with your hands. You can be sure that this will probably be one of the experiences that people will tell their colleagues about. At the same time, this little exercise can do a lot more than just bring a little fun to the event. Because now we come to the exciting part of the method.
The most important thing to know: There is no right or wrong duck. And you will notice that probably no two ducks are alike, for which there are two primary reasons.
First, participants have not seen a picture of the finished product beforehand that serves as a guide in their building activity. This quickly and impressively disproves the assumption that “duck” is a precise and sufficient work instruction. Feel free to encourage a discussion among the team about what this means in terms of collaboration and how you approach a project.
Second, even with only six bricks, there are almost countless ways to assemble them. The key point is that each person has something unique and valuable to contribute to a solution. It is precisely in this realization that the added value lies when we apply the “Duck Challenge” to everyday work. There are different approaches to a problem in our complex business world, and we need the ideas and perspectives of everyone involved to create innovative solutions.
The next steps with LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®
If you have mastered the “Duck Challenge”, you will quickly ask yourself how else you can use the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method in your business context.
The answer is: any time you want to take participants out of their comfort zone in an inspiring way, apply hands-on learning and foster communication and interaction, LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® offers exciting possibilities. In the next blog post, we will therefore devote ourselves to concrete questions that can be addressed with the method.
Curious?
CAMELOT is experienced in designing, conducting and facilitating workshops that use the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method and materials. Our experts are certified LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitators. We help our clients to use LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® as a method for solution-oriented thinking in their projects. Do you need support? Contact us!
