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EJW Solutions Limited Facilitator. Trainer. Coach. Author

Happiest when illuminating a wider career choice for researcher

One of the best things anyone's said to me after a session came from a member of the Tom's Trust team: "It gave us time ...
20/10/2026

One of the best things anyone's said to me after a session came from a member of the Tom's Trust team: "It gave us time to pause and reflect on the evolution of the charity, the internal and external forces, and the direction we want to move in."

That's the kind of conversation an away day agenda promises and rarely delivers. Done in one morning, because everyone was building rather than just talking.

I've spent this series sharing what that morning with Tom's Trust actually looked like: the blessing we opened with, the safe warm-up before the real building started, the reasons teams keep asking me back, what a great team looks like when you build it rather than just name it.

I'm taking LEGO® Serious Play® bookings for the rest of this year and into next. If your team's last proper conversation about direction happened somewhere in the last away day nobody quite remembers, let's fix that.

Trust. Open communication. Shared purpose. Creative thinking. Collaboration. Ask any team what makes them great and you'...
13/10/2026

Trust. Open communication. Shared purpose. Creative thinking. Collaboration. Ask any team what makes them great and you'll get some version of that list within thirty seconds.

Ask them how often they've actually built it together, rather than just agreed on the words, and the room usually goes quiet.

That's the gap LEGO® Serious Play® is built to close. Not naming the five ingredients of a great team and moving on to the next agenda item. Building the shared picture, together, where everyone has to show their thinking rather than just nod along with whoever spoke first.

Naming what makes a great team is the easy bit. Building it is the part that's actually worth having.

Give a room of clinical staff, fundraisers and operations people a pile of LEGO and ask them to build where their charit...
06/10/2026

Give a room of clinical staff, fundraisers and operations people a pile of LEGO and ask them to build where their charity is heading, and the story that comes out looks nothing like the one written in the strategy document.

Tom's Trust described the session better than I could: "Fun, team building, using LEGO imaginatively to tell the story and possible future of Tom's Trust."

We start every session with what I call story-making 1.0: a safe, low stakes round (build your ideal holiday, piece by piece) before anyone touches the real question. By the time the harder builds start, the whole room is already fluent in a language that has nothing to do with job titles or who chairs the meeting.

Play and serious strategy aren't opposites. Done properly, they're the same morning.

It's walnut harvest season in my garden.I'm currently up about 1.5kg on the squirrels and crows - though I suspect the c...
05/10/2026

It's walnut harvest season in my garden.

I'm currently up about 1.5kg on the squirrels and crows - though I suspect the corvids are secretly keeping score and the squirrels simply don't care. My husband's study has been chosen as the drying location. It's starting to look like a larder.

We will also, improbably, be harvesting olives this year. Handpick, brine, repeat. Until Christmas. Neither of us is particularly partial to olives. I appear to be doing this for someone else's future enjoyment.

Which is, actually, exactly the point.

This week I've been sitting with researchers in the middle of one of the toughest job markets I've seen in a long time. Bright, sparky people with real treasure inside them, applying, persevering, not yet landing. Not because they're not good enough. Because there are more good people than there are roles, and the world takes time to crack things open.

What I keep saying: the effort now is preparation. Preserve yourself for a future that's coming, even when you can't quite see it yet.

The walnuts are worth it. So are you.

If you need a sounding board while you wait - I'm here. 🌰

Five reasons teams keep asking me back with a box of bricks.It unlocks thinking that a PowerPoint slide never reaches. E...
29/09/2026

Five reasons teams keep asking me back with a box of bricks.

It unlocks thinking that a PowerPoint slide never reaches. Every voice gets heard, not just the two people who always speak first. It strengthens team connection further than a trust fall ever managed. It sparks ideas nobody would have risked saying out loud in a normal meeting. And it solves the tangled, complicated problems that one flip chart page can't hold.

I trained as a physicist before any of this. I know what a well built methodology looks like when I see the evidence behind it, and LEGO® Serious Play®, developed by Robert Rasmussen, has decades of it.

The part that gets people every time: the model in their hands means something specific to them. Nobody's just fiddling. They're thinking in three dimensions about a problem they've been stuck on in one.

If PowerPoint hasn't shifted your team's thinking yet, it's worth asking what might.

Fourteen people around a table: a charity's founder, its clinical staff, fundraising and operations. One morning. A pile...
22/09/2026

Fourteen people around a table: a charity's founder, its clinical staff, fundraising and operations. One morning. A pile of LEGO doing the thinking that hands do better than heads sometimes.

That was a recent session with Tom's Trust, a charity working in childhood bereavement. We opened with a blessing from the poet John O'Donohue, because a room like that deserves more than a flip chart and an agenda.

One of the team put it better than I could afterwards: "The LSP was a wonderful way to explore our own values, motivations and vision for our role in Tom's Trust."

That's the actual point of LEGO® Serious Play®. Not team building for its own sake. A structured route into values and vision that most meetings never get near, because nobody ever built the time into the agenda to ask.

When did your team last talk properly about why you do what you do, rather than just what's due this quarter?

The same three people talk in every meeting. Everyone else takes notes, nods, and leaves holding an opinion they never s...
15/09/2026

The same three people talk in every meeting. Everyone else takes notes, nods, and leaves holding an opinion they never said out loud.

I watched that pattern for years in universities before I ever picked up a brick for work rather than fun. Conversations that go in circles. Decisions that drag. Teams quietly working in silos while insisting they're aligned. Everyone holding a slightly different picture of where they're actually heading.

None of that is a facilitation failure. It's a sign the room needs a different tool.

This January I got certified in LEGO® Serious Play®, accredited by Robert Rasmussen. Not an icebreaker. A structured method that gets every person in the room building and talking, not just the two who always speak first.

I've been running LSP sessions with teams this year, most recently a morning with the charity Tom's Trust. Over the next few weeks I'll share what that actually looked like, the good bits and the bits that surprised me.

If your team recognises itself in any of the above, that's the conversation worth having before your next away day, not during it.

Audley End House and Gardens such a lovely bank holiday Monday walk first thing - bonus hawks! The lovely old walled gar...
31/08/2026

Audley End House and Gardens such a lovely bank holiday Monday walk first thing - bonus hawks!

The lovely old walled garden exploring future solutions- positive way to start the week

Taking a leaf from a friends rituals - few minutes the morning sun before work.
24/08/2026

Taking a leaf from a friends rituals - few minutes the morning sun before work.

Picture perfect dragon fly on my patio
23/08/2026

Picture perfect dragon fly on my patio

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Cambridge
CB224RT

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Tuesday 9am - 8pm
Wednesday 9am - 8pm
Thursday 9am - 8pm
Friday 9am - 8pm

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+447703534241

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