My Toolkit
Images for Imagination
Images make Imagination and Imagination is THE transformative tool for each and every human being. Imagination is a key creative activity, and it transcends religious, cultural or philosophical belongings.
We become actors of change when we begin imagining something better, or simply different. Indeed, we turn into active agents precisely because we wish to transform the world around us.
Images is the tool through which we visualise, narrate and review the transformations we crave for. It is not coincidental that ‘imagination’ develops from the same root of ‘image.’
Without the imagining of something, we have no direction to thrive to, nor a desire to accomplish. Imagining is the toolkit through which we visualise change, to craft it.
Making 3D IMAGES with bricks
The LSP Method
One of the most effective methods to visualise ideas, cultures and businesses is the LSP approach.
LSP stands for LEGO© SERIOUS PLAY©, and it is an methodology with over 25 years of development, first as a Research Unit at LEGO, and then, globally, as a creative visualisation toolkit to facilitate and manage change, and enhance problem-solving activities and processes.
LSP is a problem-solving toolkit to transform implicit ideas into explicit knowledge, and hands-on make 1+1=3.
By visualising ideas as 3D models made of metaphorical bricks, we give concrete form to our knowledge. In so doing, we formulate new connections to more thoroughly see what we might not have been able to see earlier.
LSP streamlines an integrated approach of creative visualising with hands-on crafting into an agile, output-driven and impactful consulting and training toolkit.
Visualising issues, processes and practices in a LSP session
The world gets increasingly complex by the second, and challenges boom in quality and quantity. Solutions, to be valuable, or, at least, sensible, require to be thorough and aligned.
LSP is a consulting and training toolkit with a proven track record in effective change management and impactful creative problem-solving, towards real-time solutions based on a thinking-outside-the-box approach and a collaborative methodology.
Hands-on LSP session
Serious Play is working differently
The LEGO Group defines play as a limited, structured, and voluntary activity that involves the imaginary. That is, it is an activity limited in time and space, structured by rules, conventions, or agreements among the players, uncoerced by authority figures, and drawing on elements of fantasy and creative imagination (LSP, 2006: pg.4).
Serious Play, in the words of Michael Schrage, researcher at MIT is any tools, technologies, techniques or toys that let people improve how they play seriously with uncertainty is guaranteed to improve the quality of innovation (Schrage, 2000: pg.2).
Serious Play can be very powerful in overcoming psychological resistance, both for learning, and hence as a training toolkit, and to engaging specific issues or social contexts, and thus as a consulting opportunity for professional development.
Participants live in the identified situation, and engage – in an extremely physical manner – with the simulated experience.
In addition, the simulation exercise is facilitated into a group context, and LSP works marvels to negotiate issues towards a shared alignment, as participants first build – together – the challenge, and, then, build – together – the agreed solution to the identified challenge.
As a problem-solving issue, LSP requires issues and solutions to be explicitly visualised and jointly negotiated.
Teams have become truly global and each team member brings to the table their unique knowledge: organisations must thrive to convert the unparalleled experience, attitudes and imagination of those who are part of the organisation itself.
As a consulting and training toolkit, LSP enhances the generation of creative ideas and the use of people’s competencies as collaborative team members. Imagination, in such a context, supports and enhances visualisation processes, and leads to more articulated and thorough results.
The human capital of each organisation requires to be endlessly prioritised and properly valued for both tactical and strategic reasons. This is in direct response to the daily challenges that each team faces in managing both internal and external dynamics, as it is geared to capitalise on the potential, too often unused, of its people.
Visualising issues, processes and practices in a LSP session
Why me?
I am a certified LSP facilitator by The Association of Master Trainers. I continue to develop my competencies with dedicated Advanced Training sessions, and by simulating case scenarios as peer-learning activities to foster our competencies.
Facilitating an LSP training session at the TEDx in Verona (Italy), May 2023
My committed involvement with the LSP approach roots back to my years at the University of Westminster (2016-2021), where I was entrusted to reboot the Creativity module initially designed by professor David Gauntlett.
The module, the first of its kind across the whole UK, was devised to innovate the academic offer of Westminster by empowering undergraduate students with hands-on competencies and skills in lateral thinking and everyday creativity.
As I reviewed the module, I decided to seriously expand the section on Imagination to further develop the understanding of visualising processes beyond the image.
For instance, isn’t a podcast an exercise in visualisation for both the speaker and the receiver? How do these two entities, the source and the receiver, visualise and imagine the storytelling? What would be different for a poem? Or indeed, in storytelling, digitally or analogically, the same narrative at different times?
Facilitating an LSP session at the University of Westminster (London, UK) with UG students, 2018
Together with my undergraduate students, we first practiced creativity, and then reflected on the creative processes of thinking, visualising and storytelling. These are a few comments:
Meaghan Simone
Dr. Fusari spreads the love of creativity and imagination coupled with realistic strategy and the knowledge to build a successful product, venture, idea. It was a great experience to be taught and mentored by him during my studies
Edward Zuo
Professor Massimiliano is one of the BEST professors I have ever met. I took the Creativity for digital media and communication major in his class. When we learned to be creative in the media area, he gave us step by step suggestions. From the basic mind map to combining different visions of thoughts. He provided various examples and personal advice to students, which helped us improve
Beyond the LSP method
The LSP method is, to me, just one of the hats I can wear for you.
Indeed, I do not sell LSP as a master of all trades. Instead, I listen, thoroughly and empathically, to my client, and then I do what I like the most: asking questions to understand in detail the issues and the concerns that keep them awake at night.
Through the Q&A session that we do together, either in person or remotely, we identify the REAL problems at work, then review the terms of the matter, and finally – together – agree on how to deal with the issues at stake.
The solution can be a session on LSP as well as a tailored training on mindmapping or using the Dixit cards to write the vision of a new enterprise and an impactful LinkedIn profile. Sometimes, could be an intensive pitching session to practice and review, hands-on and creatively, how the grammar of storytelling could reshape our communication.