Carbon celebrates its 11th birthday

We recently had a party to celebrate our 11th birthday and like all good 11th birthday parties it involved LEGO.

LEGO and financial planning might seem slightly odd bedfellows, but the LEGO Serious Play system is a business coaching and communications tool that is used the world over, with our own certified LEGO Serious Play instructor, Vics Bradley taking us through the various exercises.

The insights we got around everyone in the team’s unique approach; the challenges we each face; how we communicate with one another and, most importantly, being able to maintain a level of fun in our collaborative efforts, was invaluable and we wanted to share some of these with you.

After ‘warming up’ and realising just how many different interpretations of the word ‘tower’ there truly are, we were set the task of building our very own LEGO Superheroes. These superheroes were those gifted with superpowers we wish we had at work to help/improve/ease our roles.

Amongst the vast array of superheroes created we have picked out a few below:

Little Miss Helpful – Client Services Team

With helicopter eyes and a vehicle to race around in, she is always on the lookout for ways to help our clients or her teammates.

Mindmap Mo – Planning Team

With the superpower of being able to build a mindmap for his clients that truly captures all their hopes and dreams.

Miss Inquisitive – Planning Team

Her superpower is the ability to listen, so she can really understand her clients.

But the winner of the Carbon Superheroes was…

Super Ben – Paraplanner

Ben Lingard is our Paraplanning Team Manager, and we already think he’s ‘super’, so his power was pretty much what he does at the moment – zoom in, fix everything and then fly away again.

Next was a collaborative effort, how could we take all our individual superheroes and build something that was representative of Carbon’s values:

• Free to be different
• Be the best we can be
• Do the right thing

Split into teams, we built models to show how we all come together to represent these values and below are some of the results:

The quiet confidence model

In this model our values are bridges to one another, we might sit more naturally in one area than others but the freedom to move between and collaborate in different areas is always open. This openness breeds a quiet confidence in the strength of our team.

The personalities model

The personalities model is aware that no two people in our team are the same, but rather than cause issues our differences can complement one another. By being aware of these different personalities we can blend them to deliver the best outcomes for our clients – who may or may not wish to dance around with flowers on their head as depicted in the model.

The client journey model

The client journey model was illustrative of all the superhero powers being utilised at different stages be it rolling out the red carpet to deliver a warm, helpful, and organised welcome; to helping our clients delve deep into their hopes and dreams; to spending time simplifying the often-complex financial affairs our clients come to us with; until finally, we help our clients achieve their dream – in this case scaling Mount Kilimanjaro.

The collective superpower model

The final model we wanted to share is the collective superpower model. This was done to illustrate that whilst the individuals in our business are important and each area of the business might work on different things, it is the collaborative impact of all these individual efforts that provides the foundation that Carbon is built on. Together we can continually grow and improve the service we provide our clients.

The common theme throughout our models, and the day, was to recognise the amazing individual skills we all possess and when we collaborate in a fun creative way, we can deliver the best possible outcomes for the team and our clients.

We would like to say a huge thanks to our LEGO Serious Play instructor, Vics Bradley and to all the staff at Cairns Farm Estate in Kirknewton for hosting the session, we all thoroughly enjoyed it and were delighted with the outcomes of the session.

Please note that we are open to any enquiries about making the Carbon Superheroes into the next big superhero franchise for any interested parties, with our only two requirements being:

• The company directors have all asked for their own orange spandex superhero suits.
• It’s done in the same fun, collaborative way they were created.