Visual metaphors for collaboration planning in strategy meetings

Abstract

Purpose

Using visual metaphors with physical artefacts can improve collaboration planning processes in strategic meetings. The study presented here aims to examine these processes.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, the participants used the LEGO® Serious Play® method in strategic planning meetings. The meetings were video recorded, and a thematic analysis method was applied to produce coded themes and narratives of collaboration planning based on the visual metaphors used in the meetings.

Findings

The study participants built LEGO artefacts representing three primary visual metaphors of collaboration focussing on landscapes, interaction processes and shared goals. The participants began with building landscapes by stacking and connecting LEGO base pieces as surfaces to build on, and to represent separate physical locations and more abstract business concepts. Alternatively, landscapes were built to centre activities around key business stakeholders. In terms of interaction processes, the participants lined up LEGO character pieces to explore communications between product developers, salespersons, customers and external partners. As for shared goals, tower-like high structures were created to represent open discussions, data sharing, prototyping and threats that should be avoided.

Originality/value

This study shows that using visual metaphors with physical artefacts provides an effective method for planning strategic collaboration areas, communications and future goals. Creating and communicating visual metaphors using physical artefacts enhances the creativity and participation of the meeting participants. Our future work will focus on studying the use of physical artefacts other than LEGO pieces in different group meetings contexts to better understand the role of visual metaphors.

Citation

Illi, M., Gustafsson, R. and Masoodian, M. (2024), "Visual metaphors for collaboration planning in strategy meetings", Journal of Strategy and Management, Vol. 17 No. 4, pp. 781-801. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSMA-05-2024-0089

Introduction

Strategic planning meetings are important in developing future directions for organisations through dialogue and collaborative work. The collaboration work in such planning meetings, which are predominantly verbal and textual, can be enhanced with the use of visual and tangible artefacts (de Salas and Huxley, 2014). For example, photos, strategic maps (Jarzabkowski et al., 2013; Meilich, 2019), balanced scorecards (Goldstein, 2022) and LEGO® pieces (Roos et al., 2004; Bürgi et al., 2005; Heracleuous and Jacobs, 2008) have been used collaboratively to make sense of, and represent, strategy concepts. These types of visual tools help to identify opportunities and threats that the organisation might face, set organisational direction and plan effective ways of work collaboration, including developing shared goals to produce value (Bryson et al., 2016). In addition, using physical artefacts and communication through visual metaphors can support strategic planning activities by exploring organisational dimensions, actors, tasks and networks (Heracleous and Jacobs, 2008). The physical qualities of visual and tangible artefact used in such meetings may play an important role in supporting the process of joint sense-making and collaboration planning.

The possibility of quickly visualising and expressing thoughts by choosing and sharing visual artefacts (e.g. LEGO pieces) has been identified as an especially effective method in multi-professional meetings and when negotiating opposing views, thus making these artefacts highly collaborative metaphorical tools (McCusker and Swan, 2018). Furthermore, this kind of harmonic use of visual and tangible artefacts may also improve strategic business collaboration planning (Zasa and Buganza, 2023) in other ways that need to be investigated further.

In the context of strategic planning meetings, the use of metaphors is not merely limited to their role as a “figure of speech”, since metaphors can combine visual, material and spoken modalities of communication (Hodgkinson et al., 2006; Jarzabkowski and Seidl, 2008; Jacobs et al., 2013). For instance, in LEGO® Serious Play® strategic planning meetings, metaphors are often used to represent concrete strategic journeys and orientations of workers with artefacts made of LEGO pieces (Heracleous and Jacobs, 2008). LEGO Serious Play can also encourage participants to create metaphors on subjective values to express behaviours, experiences and emotions in business environments (Blair, 2020).

In this article, we adapt the strategy as a practice research method to study the use of visual metaphors in strategic planning meetings. Strategy as practise is a managerial and academic research perspective that began in the 1990’s (Knights and Morgan, 1991; Whittington, 1996) and has been more broadly investigated in the following decade (Hendry, 2000; Whittington, 2006). Strategy as practice allows studying the work of strategists, paying special attention to human relations and the process of strategising as a form of practical and interactional work (Mantere and Whittington, 2021; Jarzabkowski et al., 2022; Splitter et al., 2023; Langenmayr et al., 2024). Although the use of visuals and physical artefacts is central to contemporary strategic planning practices (Spee and Jarzabkowski, 2011; Comi and Whyte, 2018), the study of materiality remains an under-developed research area (Vaara and Whittington, 2012; Jarzabkowski et al., 2013). More research is in particular called for to investigate collaborative visualisation in strategic planning (Bryson et al., 2016), since effective visualisation is known to be challenging to achieve in groups involving diverse range of participants (de Salas and Huxley, 2014).

The study presented in this article aims to shed light on the metaphoric themes and narratives used in collaboration planning during strategic meetings by addressing the following research questions: What are the kinds of visual metaphors communicated in strategic planning meetings when using the LEGO Serious Play® method with LEGO® pieces? and how do these visual metaphors support collaborative sense-making and strategy development?

In this article, we start with a literature section focussing on existing research on the use of physical artifacts in strategy planning meetings and the role of visual metaphors in such meetings to support sense-making and collaboration. This review adapts the strategy as a practice perspective, focussing more specifically on the research on the materiality in strategy work and the concept of visual metaphors in group meetings. We then outline the case study meetings we have used in our research and the thematic analysis method we have followed to analyse them. We conclude by presenting some of our key findings on collaboration planning using visual metaphors, and consider these findings in the context of existing research on strategic meetings and visual metaphors.

Strategic group meetings

Strategy as practice has been studied over the past two decades, with much of the focus being on the work practices of strategy workers (Jarzabkowski et al., 2022) in strategy meetings (Hoon, 2007; Jarzabkowski and Seidl, 2008). Our focus here, on the other hand, is on the cognitive processes (Kohtamäki et al., 2021) of sense-making and materiality using visual artefacts in strategy meetings. Our aim, therefore, is to understand and address the challenges that strategy workers face in communication based on their professional substance and identity while achieving collaborative outcomes with different professionals (Splitter et al., 2023).

Strategy practitioners may experience difficulties in identifying themselves as strategists (Mantere and Whittington, 2021), which may influence their willingness to collaborate in strategic planning. This is particularly true in open strategy practices where a broader range of participants – beyond the usual strategy team – are invited to contribute to strategic planning (Hautz et al., 2017; Neeley and Leonardi, 2018; Langenmayr et al., 2024). Yet, open strategy and participatory approaches aim for inclusion and transparency in strategic work. These approaches contrast with the traditional top-down management of strategy, which are rooted in military paradigms (Knights and Morgan, 1991; Kornberger and Engberg-Pedersen, 2021). Using visual artefacts can help elicit diverse viewpoints from a wider horizontal group of participants in group settings (Pregmark and Berggren, 2020; Foss and Klein, 2023; Langenmayr et al., 2024), and as such, can better support participatory and open strategy practices.

Participatory and open strategy workshops aim to eliminate power structures and hierarchies, promoting a more inclusive multi-professional strategy-making process. Strategy workshops can, when well designed, “suspend and replace structure for a certain time period” (Hendry and Seidl, 2003, p. 183), creating a space outside traditional organisational routines. This decoupling allows participants to interact and communicate about the organisation in new ways, fostering a platform for reflexive strategic discourse and enabling strategic change (Seidl and Guerard, 2015; Hendry and Seidl, 2003).

While studies of strategic meeting interactions have identified two kinds of such meetings – being either formal or informal – they have also highlighted the need to better understand the kinds of interactions that take place in strategic meetings (Hoon, 2007). Related research has, for instance, shown that strategic meetings consist of episodes of initiation, conducting and termination, which include processes of preparing, interacting through and inferring results (Hendry and Seidl, 2003; Jarzabkowski and Seidl, 2008).

Our research aims to shed further lights on how strategic meetings are conducted, and how collaboration planning can be supported using visual artefacts. More specifically, we focus on the concept of visual metaphor by using physical materials, cognitive thought processes and visual communication (Jung et al., 2017). The visual artefacts used in the study presented here have been LEGO pieces, and the group process followed has been the LEGO Serious Play.

Visual metaphors in strategic group meetings

Collaborative multidisciplinary work has been identified as a challenge in strategic practices due to the difficulties of different participants in contributing their perspectives (Langenmayr et al., 2024). Various methods have therefore been proposed to facilitate such collaborative multidisciplinary work. For instance, using visual artefacts as part of the LEGO Serious Play has been shown to support creating shared models (Gkogkidis and Dacre, 2021; Benesova, 2023). In addition, LEGO Serious Play helps strategic professionals (e.g. strategy consultants), intermediary strategists (e.g. middle managers) and non-strategists to collaborate by potentially reducing their “interdiscursive tension” (Langenmayr et al., 2024).

LEGO Serious Play was created as a metaphorical tool for business and strategic development contexts and has successfully been used in such activities (Wengel et al., 2016; Benesova, 2023; Pedregosa-Fauste et al., 2024; Shipway and Henderson, 2023). The LEGO Serious Play method used in strategic work (Heracleous and Jacobs, 2008) relies on storytelling (Barry and Elmes, 1997) with visual artefacts. The method focuses on a visual model – consisting of LEGO pieces – jointly built by the meeting participants, which aims to help communicate nuanced insights from each of the individual participants (Shipway and Henderson, 2023).

The use of LEGO Serious Play has been shown to support strategic meetings in many different ways. For example, using LEGO artefacts can connect serious work tasks into energetic playful planning tasks (Shipway and Henderson, 2023), while reducing coercion (Hinthorne and Schneider, 2012; Shipway and Henderson, 2023), and helping to elicit abstract patterns, relationships and connections related to the planned tasks (Shipway and Henderson, 2023). In addition, LEGO Serious Play creates a non-hierarchical and collaborative work environment in which everyone creates their own models and shares them with others (Gkogkidis and Dacre, 2021; Benesova, 2023; Hayes, 2023; Pedregosa-Fauste et al., 2024).

There are, however, some limitations to using LEGO Serious Play as well. For instance, the method has been considered too playful for serious tasks, which can potentially be avoided with clear instructions from the facilitator (Benesova, 2023; Pedregosa-Fauste et al., 2024). In addition, repeated use of LEGO Serious Play can become overwhelming, and therefore, it may be suitable to use the method for more challenging strategic planning meetings only (Benesova, 2023) – e.g. collaboration planning used in the study presented in this article.

LEGO Serious Play is about metaphoric communication (Grienitz and Schmidt, 2012; Gkogkidis and Dacre, 2021). The use of metaphors in strategic meetings enables the participants to see and develop strategy from their different professional perspectives. For instance, using the metaphor of a forest, it can be seen from a helicopter perspective as a broad landscape, or alternatively from the perspective of being in the forest, as an environment that requires navigating through the trees (Franklin, 2002). By using such a visual metaphor, it becomes possible for different professionals to participate in a process of shared sense-making and collaboration.

Reddy’s (1979) work titled “The conduit metaphor”, along with Lakoff’s and Johnson’s (1980) book “Metaphors we live by,” can be considered as the grounding literature on conceptualising metaphors. They both refer to the use of metaphors in language as metaphorical linguistic expressions. Metaphors help to express a changing perspective. For instance, to convey the meaning of an old and evolving concept, the metaphor of water, buoyancy and motion is often used – e.g. “that concept has been floating around for decades'' (Reddy, 1979, p. 291).

Therefore, the concept of metaphor can be defined as a partly, or fully, abstract representation of the real world, by seeing one thing in terms of another (Kövecses, 2010). These two metaphorically related “things'' refer to the target domain and the source domain (Celentano and Dubois, 2014), which are understood to be context-dependent and situated characteristics (Heath et al., 2014). These characteristics need to be applied differently depending on the kind of metaphor being used.

In the context of the meetings discussed in the study presented here, the source domain refers to the visual artefacts (e.g. LEGO pieces) used to represent a metaphor and the target domain to their meaning in the real world. According to Kövecses (2010, p. 4), “the target domain is the domain that we try to understand through the use of the source domain.”

Here we adopt the human-computer interaction perspective of metaphors (Blackwell, 2006), and use it in the context of strategic planning meetings. Based on this perspective, Jung et al. (2017) divide the links between the source and target domains into material, cognitive and semantic links. We use this division to analyse the material building of artefacts, the cognitive thought processes of the participants and visual communication in expressing metaphors during the group meetings of the study presented in this article.

The material properties of metaphors are connected to morphologies of giving a form to the joint built using visual artefacts (e.g. LEGOs) during group meetings (Jung and Stolterman, 2012). This form is created through the contextually applied graphic, tactile and temporal short-term agency of visual artefacts, as well as by assigning meanings to those artefacts (Jung et al., 2017). Affordances of the artefacts used give material limitations for the actions performed with those artefacts (Gibson, 1979), in what Norman (1988) defines as the design aspects of the artefacts. According to Jung et al. (2017), these material limitations relate to which artefacts can, or cannot, be connected to others, depending on their sizes and shapes, or even colours and other visual appearances – some of which offer more affordances than others (Bresciani, 2019). In addition, the social attributes of affordance relate to the relationships between individuals using the artefacts (Parchoma, 2014), and the given affordances invite certain behaviour through the objects and individuals involved (Withagen et al., 2012). Material aspects enable us to portray the business world as it is, as well as metaphors to illustrate what it is like.

Cognition is about thought processes, which ground the visual metaphor (Jung et al., 2017). Cognition links refer to visual schemas we begin to learn directly after birth, which fuel the creation of metaphors in adult age (Hurtienne et al., 2015). In strategic meetings, for instance, cognition relies on selecting individual objects for use and rearranging them (Bakker et al., 2012; Reed et al., 2023). Other cognitive links in these meetings are, for example, orientational up-down, near-far, front-back, centre-periphery, big-small, bright-dark, or light-heavy. Cognitive links can also relate to attraction or blocking, and diversion by stacking things on top of each other or separating them apart (Mander et al., 1992). When studying business, the learned cognition relates to mental models such as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis (Helms and Nixon, 2010) to better understand the weaknesses and strengths of the business.

Semantic link refers to the visual communication of the metaphor through presenting narratives. More specifically, shapes, colours and textures constitute the semantic link, or in other words, the visual characteristics of metaphors (Jung et al., 2017). Despite the differences in verbal and visual expression of metaphors, a combined use of visual and verbal metaphors can make meetings more effective (Parsons, 2018). Visual metaphors also improve semantic memory compared to using words alone, and they can be anchored to memory even more effectively by using artefacts with rich visual features (Bolognesi, 2016). LEGO builds – visual models created during LEGO Serious Play – are often visually rich (McCusker and Swan, 2018) which may help remembering them. Even stronger memory is produced by verbally presenting the visualisation to include narrative features of metaphors (Bolognesi and Aina, 2019). Again, this is an element of the LEGO Serious Play method.

Existing research on using metaphors in group meetings has focused on combining language with gestures, visuals and physical materials to provide creative ways of planning strategy (Heracleous and Jacobs, 2008; Ylipulli et al., 2017). Since creative associations are challenging to produce from scratch, and having too many artefact options can be difficult, approaches with a limited set of material to choose from have been found to be more successful (Bae et al., 2020; Kang et al., 2021). Funke (2009) has, however, noted that in creative processes, divergent thinking is constructed with unusual associations and changes of perspectives. While this may be easier for people with visual training (Kang et al., 2021), in such cases, the use of more varied material might be more effective.

Although all metaphors can be considered visual to some extent, linguistic and visual metaphors are understood separately (Hurtienne, 2017; Bolognesi and Aina, 2019). Visual metaphors activate our thinking differently, based on image schemas, and may sometimes contain similar semiotics (e.g. referring to a plane using a bird metaphor). Linguistic metaphors, on the other hand, can be more conventional expressions without similar semiotics (Bolognesi and Aina, 2019). Visual metaphors are also dense, original, context-dependent, peculiarly structured and unexpected (Bolognesi, 2016).

In terms of tangibility, psychologists argue that the use of physical artefacts can support the creation of metaphors by bridging abstract and concrete concepts during group meetings (Bakker et al., 2012). Tangible artefacts evoke memories, enable sensorial experiences and initiate creating ideas to help represent certain intended technical and social contexts (Jung et al., 2017), as well as preventing communication from getting stuck during group meetings (Huron et al., 2017). When working with physical artefacts, gestures can be made to reinforce the presentation narrative and make it easier to follow for the audience (Sun et al., 2022). Presentation of built visual models is an important part of the LEGO Serious Play method. However, as the method relies on a limited set of LEGO pieces, presenters often need to improvise using certain artefacts to represent their desired metaphors.

Finally, it should also be added that in a study that focused on the use of LEGO pieces during meetings, McCusker and Swan (2018) found that the use of these artefacts led to less adversarial meetings, even in situations with opposing views between the participants. In these meetings, collaboration and harmonious innovation work occurred because the participants selected and placed physical models made with LEGO pieces on the table in front of everyone to help their group communication, instead of only talking (McCusker and Swan, 2018). This result showed that artefacts made of LEGO pieces can act as potentially highly collaborative meeting communication tools.

Case study data collection and analysis

Our research study presented here used a case study method to better understand the visual metaphoric themes and narratives created with physical artefacts in strategic planning meetings. The case study method is particularly suitable for this research as it allows for an in-depth, contextual examination of complex phenomena in real-life settings (Yin, 1994). This method is widely recognised for its capacity to generate rich, detailed insights into issues where the boundaries between the phenomenon under study and the context are not evident (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 1994; Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007).

The cases used in this study were selected from a larger set of strategic meeting workshops. They were chosen to represent 1) more creative and collaborative planning meetings and 2) representative selections from different industry and professional sectors. The aim of the study was to see whether the meeting participants would expose commonalities in their use of visual metaphors in strategy planning, while expressing and communicating issues related to strategy work. We applied the purposeful sampling strategy to examine different information-rich cases (Palinkas et al., 2015), which represented strategic meetings, including cases involving participants from the same organisation, as well as cases with participants from different organisations (e.g. university staff and company representatives). We followed this approach because selecting multiple cases would allow a broader exploration of the research question and significantly affect the quality of the resulting researched theory (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007).

Table 1 provides a summary of the dataset used in this study. We used video recordings of the selected case study meetings. These recordings were from strategic meetings in the domains of city planning, entrepreneurial education, construction, energy and consultation businesses. The meeting participants included city planners, entrepreneurial students, managers, consultants and university staff. The participants chose together their own group meeting topic after discussing potential topics with the meeting facilitator – the second author of this article, who has experience of facilitating strategic planning meetings using the LEGO Serious Play method. The dataset provides a rich collection of visual metaphoric themes and narratives due to the large diversity of the meeting topics chosen by the participants, as well as due to their different professional backgrounds.

The participants followed a facilitated process in which they were required to build, combine, discuss and present their narratives using artefacts they made with LEGO pieces during their meeting, first individually and then in their groups. They communicated visual metaphors using a storytelling method (Boje, 2019). In total, 24 participants took part in these meeting presentations, with one of the participants presenting twice (in videos number 3 and number 5). Video 16 includes three group presentations, as well as several interim presentations in addition to presenting the final builds (i.e. the final artefact built using LEGO pieces). The LEGO builds were recreated for the purpose of reporting this study.

Although different methodologies have been applied previously to contextualise strategic work, not many methods have been utilised to investigate the purposeful use of visual metaphors from a thematic perspective (Balogun et al., 2014). For this study, we adopted the thematic analysis method proposed by Braun and Clarke (2021) for the identification, analysis and reporting of visual metaphors in the recorded presentation dataset. In this approach to thematic analysis, the researchers are able to make creative personal interpretations based on their analytic skills (Braun and Clarke, 2016, 2019).

It is important to note here that since the analysis of visual metaphors used in strategic planning meetings is a relatively new approach, we relied on inductive reasoning for coding instances of the used metaphors, as well as for generating themes directly from data without any pre-set hypotheses (Sjöden et al., 2018). However, since thematic analysis provides a flexible process (Kadir et al., 2020), we included both content data by coding themes and narrative patterns by analysing actual presentation fragments – i.e. narratives presented by participants.

Since the coding process was carried out by a single researcher – the first author of this article – we took several steps to encounter any potential limitation of the use of a single coder. First, the coder maintained a detailed coding journal throughout the process, documenting decisions, reflections and emerging patterns. This ensured clarity and allowed for ongoing refinement of the codes. Additionally, the coder engaged in regular debriefing sessions with two other experts on qualitative analysis and visual metaphoric research – the other two authors of this article. These discussions served as checkpoints, where codes and emerging themes were reviewed and challenged, ensuring that the analysis remained grounded in the data.

Following the initial coding, thematic analysis was carried out to group similar codes into broader thematic categories. This process was conducted iteratively, with multiple rounds of coding and re-coding to refine the thematic structure and ensure that it accurately represented the complexity of the visual data (Saldaña, 2016). This led to grouping the identified visual metaphors into several well-defined themes which captured the core strategic narratives articulated by the participants. Table 2 provides a summary the four steps followed for coding and analysis of our study data.

The dataset used for this study consists of 16 video-recorded presentations collected by the second author of this article using a mobile phone in 5 different strategic planning meetings. The analysis started by transcribing the presented narratives from each video – totalling 5,381 words – followed by coding and creating themes as described above. This led to identifying the following themes: collaboration (45 codes), business (39 codes) and innovation (25 codes). Another set of less frequent codes was also formed based on the following themes: sustainability (16 codes), identifying threats (7 codes) and usability (6 codes).

Since the theme of collaboration was the most frequently used, the subsequent analysis focused on visual metaphors related to collaboration during strategic planning meetings. In this analysis the existing codes of collaboration were divided into three themes based on their content, being either business-area related, communicational, or goal-oriented fragments. The three themes were defined as follows: landscapes, interaction processes and shared goals. Finally, demonstrative narrative samples were selected from the transcripts to represent these subsequent themes. Additionally, we rebuilt some of the example LEGO models presented in the meetings from the recorded video data. These were photographed and are shown in the findings section below.

It should also be noted here that the study participants' quotes included in the following section have been translated from Finnish by the first author for illustrative purposes, and therefore may not always be verbatim.

Study findings related to collaboration

As noted above, one of the most common themes identified in the analysis of our study data was that of collaboration. This may partly be related to the highly collaborative nature of working with tangible artefacts (McCusker and Swan, 2018). Our analysis also showed that there were three primary visual metaphors used in the LEGO artefacts created by the study participants and in the narratives of their presentations. These three metaphors are related to business landscapes, interaction processes and shared goals. In the following sections, we describe these metaphors and provide examples of them from the presented narratives of the study participants.

Landscapes

In the broadest sense, the participants created landscapes about the collaborative aspects of their respective businesses, which provided the starting point for constructing their LEGO artefacts.

For instance, flat base pieces in different colours were used by the participants to represent the separation of geographic locations in their business. Base pieces were also used to express more abstract landscapes of sustainability in corporate communication – e.g. using the green or blue colour. Moreover, landscapes were built to communicate different development areas for business ecosystems, illustrate service networks, or represent operational environments. The landscapes metaphors were assigned symbolic meanings, which related to the size, colour, location and layering of the LEGO base pieces. These base pieces were also connected to broader landscapes in the LEGO builds by other study participants.

In the example illustration shown in Figure 1, the presenter in Video 14 refers to their global and local business actors, as well as their information exchange using base pieces of different sizes and colours.

We acknowledge the support from the different continents. And then the information flows, as here are these local experts who have received help from there and improved. Then, here is this kind of a hero who observes this group so that they also work accordingly and work as a link with these international persons. Video 14

In this example, the presenter used a smaller base piece in the light grey colour to reference communication with their local actors. The darker grey colour beneath that was used to represent their global business environment and stakeholders. Then, the presenter moved on to the broadest and more abstract blue landscape, with coloured pieces built on top of it, to describe their future plans, to become “a bit more colourful and international,” as mentioned in the following quote:

Here is [company name removed], when we get help from here, we get colourfulness so we will be separated from that grey mass where the other builders are in. We are a bit more colourful and international. Video 14

Another example of a landscape metaphor is shown in Figure 2. In this example from Video 16, the landscape presents a circular arrangement around a single central figurehead person – or gatekeeper – needed for a strategic project to take place. Using this landscape, the presenter created a peripheral metaphor around a central customer person in relation to their surrounding business environment:

So, we need to find this person, because otherwise, it is sort of, this project does not proceed. We need to see this from that person's perspective, this artificial intelligence and the situation otherwise. Video 16

Interaction processes

The study participants used different metaphors relating to interaction processes to describe collaborations and negotiations between different actors or stakeholders and to capture their activities. For instance, they used various LEGO character pieces to represent product developers, salespersons and customers, or other stakeholders such as representatives of companies, city municipalities and universities. In addition, different equipment and tools associated with various LEGO characters were included in the constructed artefacts to express and narrate their communicational roles. Sometimes, the actors were joined to each other using flexible LEGO pieces. At other times, more creative elements such as colourful or plant LEGO pieces were used to present, for example, customer journeys.

Figure 3 represents an example of an interaction process metaphor narrated in Video 16. In this example, a customer in the form of a king – subsequently turned into a turtle – goes through several stages that involve different professionals from the consulting company who provide various customer services. During the first presentation of this narrative, different LEGO characters were used to describe different metaphoric roles for providing various company services:

There is a vision guy [pointing at the wizard character], and there is a fighter, knight [pointing at the knight character], and there is a doer guy [pointing at the builder character] who knows. Video 16

In the final presentation of this same example (shown in Figure 3), another presenter in the group narrated a broader interaction process as:

We can present him [referring to the customer/king], what he has to do, that means get down from the tower … [moving pointer stick down], and we have to explain that it means that he might turn from a king to a very slow aa turtle … We also tell him there might be some misdirection that could end or kill, these red dots are what is wrong or what is dangerous on the way. At the end, we will present him with the solution Video 16

In this example, the metaphoric characterisation of the customer changing from a king to a turtle was used to communicate the slowing effect of engaging with novel digital services. In addition, in the interaction process that followed, the wizard character represented a person with a vision for the customer, the knight character represented a person who negotiates with the customer, and the builder character represented a person who implements the vision and executes the project. This particular story ended with the company offering a project suitable for the customer. This example illustrates the complex ways in which artefacts created using simple LEGO pieces helped the meeting participants to plan concrete strategic collaboration roadmaps using visual metaphors.

Shared goals

Planning for collaboration using a shared goal metaphor sometimes became the central concept of the landscape metaphor by, for instance, creating a high structure or a tower. These shared goals were associated with important persons of influence, or with something valuable to achieve. In some cases, a tower was used to represent an existing threat, which the collaborators should aim to avoid or move away from. The narratives using these metaphors described ways of achieving goals through open discussions, data sharing and prototyping collaboratively together.

In the example shown in Figure 4, a large radio tower was created to represent an abstract shared goal, as part of a narrative describing the collaborative links between a city and a university:

The goal shows the benefits of the university but also of the [XXXXXX (city name removed)] with the radio tower. Sometimes the wheels do not synch during the discussion, but after the discussion, all flags point towards the same direction. Video 1

Figure 5, on the other hand, presents an example of a situation in which the goal metaphor works in the opposite way. This time, the goal is to move away from the high structure representing a problematic situation for the customer organisation:

It is represented by this boat on which the key players want to get away from the mess that is here, from under that spider web that exists now, to which they get by the help and with [organisation name removed]. Video 7

The metaphors of shared goals helped the study participants communicate the concept of orienting towards a collaborative goal using the LEGO artefacts, as a way of describing how to achieve a goal. The shared goal metaphors, such as using LEGO character pieces facing towards a tower, or using a boat pointing away from a tower, helped the participants to represent their ideas in a visual form.

Discussion

The study presented here has aimed to address a research gap in our understanding of the role of visual metaphors in strategic collaboration planning meetings (Heracleous and Jacobs, 2008; Vaara and Whittington, 2012; Bryson et al., 2016). Our findings indicate that physical artifacts can facilitate the visualisation of collaboration areas, the portrayal of people and interactions, and the explication of shared goals. More specifically, the three types of metaphors identified in our study – related to landscapes, interaction processes and shared goals – seem to be important for effective collaboration planning.

The use of LEGO Serious Play as a method in strategy planning meetings provides an effective visual tool for using metaphors, even in more challenging meetings involving collaborations between different types of professionals (Grienitz and Schmidt, 2012; Gkogkidis and Dacre, 2021; Langenmayr et al., 2024; Shipway and Henderson, 2023). This method contrasts with traditional strategic visualisation practices, which often lack a collaborative nature (de Salas and Huxley, 2014). In collaborative planning, participants can be sensitive about occupying subordinate roles (Jarzabkowski and Balogun, 2009). Therefore, visual artifacts can facilitate inclusive participation, thus enabling joint planning and ideation among all stakeholders (Mantere and Whittington, 2021). However, it is important to note that the continuous use of LEGO in strategic meetings among core groups could become overwhelming (Benesova, 2023).

Our study involving different cases confirms the potential of using LEGO Serious Play in different business contexts of strategic meetings and shows that the method produces collaborative results. In addition, our study sheds some further light on the kinds of interactions that take place in strategy meetings (Hoon, 2007), in terms of the use of visual metaphors as part of creative and abstract ideation processes.

In other studies, visual metaphors with LEGO artefacts have been used successfully to enhance creativity, sense-making and abstraction in strategic communication (Heracleous and Jacobs, 2008; McCusker and Swan, 2018). Our study extends this understanding by focussing on the thematic and narrative patterns of visual metaphors used in strategy planning meetings and provides some examples of their creative application in collaborative planning, using landscapes, interaction processes and shared goals.

The landscapes were built from flat base pieces to form differently coloured and sized areas by layering them on top of each other and sometimes by connecting the base pieces. These distinct areas were assigned meanings, such as global business areas, or more abstract concepts like future sustainable development. These areas were enriched with different characters and coloured LEGO blocks to indicate, for example, stakeholder groups and international collaborations. Sometimes the landscapes were built in a centre-peripheral arrangement around a key person of influence. Most essentially, visual metaphors of landscapes worked as areas of collaboration, which also afforded other metaphors to be built upon.

Interaction process metaphors included using different LEGO character pieces and structures to explore business communications and portray relationships. These communicational metaphors represented the changing roles of stakeholders, ways of avoiding threats and defining interaction process steps to be taken toward achieving specific goals. For example, in the customer journey of a consultation service sale, metaphors worked as abstract communicators about the nature of different interactions between the customer and various professionals in the organisation.

The metaphors about shared goals revolved around building high structures, such as towers, to represent things that are important to the organisation. Interestingly, these high structures were not always about the kinds of positive goals to aim for, but sometimes represented threatening situations to escape from, or negative things to avoid in reaching better collaboration – similar to what Bryson et al. (2016) discuss in terms of achievable and avoidance goals. The direction of a LEGO flag was, for instance, used to communicate a collaboration metaphor representing a shared direction among business stakeholders. Through these types of visual metaphors, shared goals were clarified and explicated.

Furthermore, by connecting landscapes, interaction processes and shared goals together through the narratives of individual and group presentations around shared built visual artefacts, it is possible to better understand and remember strategy planning outcomes. This is also supported by existing research which suggests that using visual and verbal narratives together improves recollection of the story (Bolognesi and Aina, 2019). The use of visual metaphors in our study seemed to help the participants see and understand the broader collaborative landscape dynamics and the nature of specific interactions, and to orient them toward achieving specific goals.

Table 3 provides a framework based on the work of Jung et al. (2017) for presenting a summary of the metaphoric features of the strategic collaboration planning visual metaphors our study has identified.

In this framework, the material building of the visual artefacts is connected to physiological, psychological and social aspects of strategic group work (Bürgi et al., 2005). In this embodied practice of hand and mind, the study participants engaged in graphic, tactile and temporal use of artefacts, as well as in assigning meanings and functionalities to the used objects. They stacked pieces, arranged other pieces around a specific central piece, lined them up to represent processes, or created high structures to define goals.

The cognitive thought behind building these pieces (Reed et al., 2023) relates to visual schemas, which influence choosing and arranging visual artefacts. More specifically, cognition is connected to stacking, separating and locating artefacts, as well as to their roles in either attracting or blocking some kinds of activities.

The visual communication in our framework relates to presenting narratives, which produces a compelling and engaging story about strategic planning through communicating visual metaphors (Taylor et al., 2018). An engaging story includes an overall description of the situation (landscape), characters (interaction processes) and a plot towards a specific goal (for characters in a story see, Dasu et al., 2024). The visual metaphor in a story is constructed by presenting symbolic visuals, shapes and indicative colours to communicate collaboration.

Finally, it is relevant here to mention the concepts of visual abstraction and substitution by Jarzabkowski et al. (2013). In strategic planning, these concepts relate to using visuals from lower abstraction (e.g. photos) towards higher abstraction (e.g. charts), in which the more abstract visuals substitute the less abstract ones. Metaphors contain a level of abstraction depending on the used physical artefacts and the context of their use. For example, representing a worker with a LEGO character is a less abstract visualisation than representing a customer using a turtle figure, which is likely to provoke stronger metaphoric thoughts. Substitution, on the other hand, relates to looking for a certain artefact, and if not found, then improvising and replacing it with a more complex metaphor containing more abstraction.

Based on these concepts, the LEGO Serious Play method facilitates creative visual associations (Ylipulli et al., 2017) relating to abstractions of strategic collaboration. Creating visual metaphors using LEGO artefacts supports the participants in open knowledge-sharing on collaboration possibilities and engages everyone in the process of visualisation from the beginning. Although this material practice has limitations regarding the affordances of what can be built and represented using the available artefacts, a shared visual narrative is produced as the outcome of using the physical artefacts. Using the LEGO Serious Play method with visual metaphors leads to strategy planning meetings becoming more creative and collaborative, which is valuable when involving different professionals, such as in the case of participatory and open strategy meetings.

The theoretical contributions of our study relate to strategy as practise (Jarzabkowski et al., 2022), which sees strategy as a practical and interactional work. This study has focused on material practices in strategy meetings and more specifically on the use of visual metaphors (McCusker and Swan, 2018) and LEGO Serious Play (Heracleuous and Jacobs, 2008; Benesova, 2023; Pedregosa-Fauste et al., 2024; Shipway and Henderson, 2023). By identifying and categorising the visual metaphors related to landscapes, interaction processes, and shared goals, the study findings offer a nuanced understanding of how these visual tools can bridge gaps in strategic communication and foster a shared understanding and vision among participants in strategy planning meetings. This contributes to research on open strategy (Whittington et al., 2011; Neeley and Leonardi, 2018) and participatory approaches (Mantere and Vaara, 2008; Vaara and Whittington, 2012), by providing empirical evidence on how visual artifacts can democratise strategy-making processes and lead to collaborative outcomes.

Moreover, this study uncovers unexpected insights into how the use of visual metaphors can shape strategic discussions in ways that were not previously recognised. For instance, while it was anticipated that the use of visual metaphors would help clarify and align goals, our findings show that it can also serve as powerful tool for uncovering challenges. This extends the work of Heracleous and Jacobs (2008) on the role of visual artifacts in strategy by showing that visual metaphors do more than represent – they actively engage participants in a dialogue that can surface underlying strategy challenges that the organisation needs to attend to (Jarzabkowski and Balogun, 2009). Investigating the process of building and interpreting visual metaphors has brought to light potential opportunities and challenges in strategy being seen from different perspectives, which might have otherwise remained hidden in observing more conventional strategy meetings (Bryson et al., 2016; Hoon, 2007). This highlights the potential of using visual metaphors not only as a tool for collaboration but also as a mechanism for revealing and addressing strategic issues that may be overlooked in traditional approaches. These insights suggest that the role of visual metaphors in strategic planning extends beyond mere representation by actively shaping the strategic discourse and influencing the direction of collaborative planning efforts.

Conclusions

The study presented here has focused on the use of visual metaphors with physical artefacts made of LEGO pieces in strategic planning meetings. The results of this study demonstrate the potential of using visual metaphors in planning collaborations. The use of artefacts made with LEGO pieces provides a rich tool for communicating visual metaphors centred around collaboration.

This study has identified, in particular, three types of collaborative metaphors. Landscape metaphors were communicated using differently coloured LEGO base pieces to represent business locations or more abstract themes such as sustainability or internationalisation. Interaction process metaphors were represented using different LEGO characters, for instance, to explore the role of customers and service providers during interpersonal sales processes of an IT consultancy. Shared goal metaphors were represented as high structures, such as towers, to communicate achievable goals for the business to aim for, or things that should be avoided. The theoretical implications build on research of strategic meetings including participatory and open strategy practices in which collaboration planning forms an essential activity. Using visuals metaphors supports resolving strategic issues while connecting different professional viewpoints.

While these findings are valuable in improving our understanding of the use of visual metaphors with physical artefacts in strategic collaboration planning, the current study has a number of limitations. Although different cases were included in this study, the nature of these cases makes generalisation of its findings limited. Since the chosen cases were from different business contexts, more focused studies on specific types of businesses would increase our understanding visual metaphors within specific domains. Further studies could also broaden the contextual scope of our findings in terms of other kinds of strategic meetings.

Finally, the current study has only looked at the narratives of the presentations made by the study participants to others at the end of strategy planning meetings, rather than investigating the interactions between the participants during the entire meetings. We plan to conduct other studies aiming to further investigate group interactions and communication using visual metaphors with physical artefacts in meetings.

Figures

Figure 1

In this example landscape metaphor, various geographic and more abstract business environments are represented by differently coloured and sized base pieces stacked on top of each other

Figure 2

In this example, the landscape is a centre-peripheral metaphor around the central figurehead character with a red flag placed on its head, to the right of the grey shark. Different bases and other LEGO pieces around it are described in the narrative presentation from the perspective of this central person, who has a problem to solve

Figure 3

In this example of an interaction process metaphor, LEGO characters representing different professionals in the company are lined up, with other pieces used to represent important factors to avoid or have involved in different processes

Figure 4

In this example of a shared goal metaphor, there is a black radio tower towards which all the flags should be directed, to indicate fluid collaboration between a city and a university

Figure 5

In this example, a high structure is used to represent the goal of customer organisation moving away from something using a boat metaphor

Table 1

A summary of the dataset analysed in this article

Videos	Presenters (n)	Topic	Time (video number)
1–2	City planners (4)	What is a good strategy collaboration like?	01:45 min (1), 02:42 min (2)
3–6	University entrepreneurial education (3)	What are central contributing factors to failure in digital transformation?	03:06 min (3), 04:40 min (4), 03:40 min (5), 07:25 min (6)
7	Construction company and university representatives (3)	How can platform business, data and platform solutions improve workflow in building construction?	05:35 min
8–15	Middle managers from energy businesses (8)	What are the most central success factors in energy business for companies?	02:19 min (8), 01:13 min (9), 01:41 min (10), 02:10 min (11), 00:39 min (12), 01:44 min (13), 01:01 min (14), 00:56 min (15)
16	Consultants for digital services (6)	How to seal the deal with potential customers?	15:39 min

Source(s): Authors’ own work

Table 2

A summary of the thematic coding and analysis process followed in this study

Transcribing	Coding	Creating themes	Narrative analysis
This involved transcribing the video recordings verbatim to provide verbal and some non-verbal (contextual) aspects of the data	During the initial coding phase, segments of text, which appeared relevant to the research questions were coded	The initial codes were reviewed to identify significant patterns and themes	The analysis not only considered what is said but how it is said, including the use of metaphors and storytelling techniques

Source(s): Authors’ own work

Table 3

A framework for representing material, cognitive and visual features of metaphors identified in our study