Tuesday, January 21, 2025

g-f(2)3301 LEGO's Leadership Playground: A Blueprint for Cultural Transformation

 


By Fernando Machuca and Perplexity

Type of Knowledge: Nugget Knowledge


LEGO's innovative "Leadership Playground" approach, as detailed in MIT Sloan Management Review's "How the Lego Group Built Culture Change: From the Ground Up," offers valuable insights for organizations seeking to revitalize their culture and drive sustainable growth.



genioux GK Nugget:


"LEGO's Leadership Playground empowers employees at all levels to embody three key behaviors: being brave, curious, and focused, fostering a culture of innovation and agility." — Fernando Machuca and Perplexity, January 21, 2025



genioux Foundational Fact:


LEGO's cultural transformation, initiated in 2017, involved a bottom-up approach to redefine leadership principles. By engaging a diverse cross-functional team and emphasizing simplicity and flexibility, LEGO successfully implemented a new leadership model that rekindled growth and enhanced employee engagement.



The 10 most relevant genioux Facts:


  1. LEGO recognized the need for cultural change to support a new business strategy in 2017 after a period of stagnant growth.
  2. The company developed the "Leadership Playground" concept, focusing on three core behaviors: being brave, focused, and curious.
  3. LEGO used a bottom-up approach, involving a diverse cross-functional team of 15 employees to articulate leadership principles.
  4. The process was guided by simple rules: anchoring principles in LEGO's mission, ensuring they were enduring, and creating an inspirational rather than prescriptive model.
  5. LEGO recruited volunteer "playground builders" from across the organization to facilitate discussions and implementation.
  6. The company avoided a mechanistic approach to evaluating leadership performance, focusing on contextual discussions during reviews.
  7. This cultural transformation helped LEGO rekindle growth, with revenues increasing an average of 10% annually over five years.
  8. The Leadership Playground defines a leader's job as "Energizing everybody every day."
  9. LEGO partnered with IMD to develop and scale up the Leadership Playground through workshops and programs for senior leaders.
  10. The company measures the impact of the Leadership Playground through annual pulse surveys and encourages teams to define what being focused, curious, and brave means to them.


By implementing these strategies, LEGO has created a more resilient, engaged, and innovative organization capable of thriving in an increasingly complex business landscape.



g-f(2)3301: The Juice of Golden Knowledge




Empowering Innovation Through Bottom-Up Cultural Transformation


"LEGO's Leadership Playground exemplifies a powerful approach to cultural transformation, emphasizing bottom-up engagement and three core behaviors: being brave, curious, and focused. By involving employees at all levels in defining and implementing leadership principles, LEGO created a more agile, innovative, and resilient organization. This approach, which included recruiting volunteer "playground builders" to facilitate discussions and implementation, led to renewed growth and improved employee engagement. The Leadership Playground defines a leader's job as "Energizing everybody every day," fostering a culture where all employees feel valued, heard, and empowered to contribute. This model demonstrates that effective cultural change requires both top-down support and widespread employee involvement, creating a blueprint for organizations seeking to revitalize their leadership culture and drive sustainable growth in complex business environments." — Fernando Machuca and Perplexity, January 21, 2025



REFERENCES

The g-f GK Context


Donald Sull and Charles Sull, How the Lego Group Built Culture Change: From the Ground Up, MIT Sloan Management Review, January 10, 2025.



ABOUT THE AUTHORS


Donald Sull is a professor of the practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a cofounder of CultureX. Charles Sull is a cofounder of CultureX.



Classical Summary of the Article


The MIT Sloan Management Review article "How the Lego Group Built Culture Change: From the Ground Up" discusses how Lego transformed its leadership culture to reignite growth after a period of stagnation. Key points from the article include:


  1. In 2017, Lego's new leadership team recognized the need for cultural change to support a new business strategy.
  2. The company developed a "leadership playground" concept, emphasizing three core behaviors: being brave, focused, and curious.
  3. Lego used a bottom-up approach to articulate leadership principles, involving a diverse cross-functional team of 15 employees.
  4. The process was guided by simple rules: anchoring principles in Lego's mission, ensuring they were enduring, and creating an inspirational rather than prescriptive model.
  5. To embed the new culture, Lego recruited volunteer "playground builders" from across the organization to facilitate discussions and implementation.
  6. The company avoided a mechanistic approach to evaluating leadership performance, instead focusing on contextual discussions during reviews.
  7. This cultural transformation has helped Lego rekindled its growth, with revenues increasing an average of 10% annually over the past five years.

The article emphasizes the importance of employee involvement, simplicity, and flexibility in successfully implementing cultural change at scale.





Biography of Donald Sull and Charles Sull


Donald Sull is a Professor of the Practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he directs the Strategic Agility Project and the Culture 500. He previously held professorships at Harvard Business School and London Business School. Sull earned his bachelor's, MBA, and doctorate from Harvard University. He has been recognized as a rising star in management thinking by The Economist and has published extensively, including six books and over 100 cases and articles. Sull co-founded CultureX, a company that uses AI to measure and improve corporate culture.


Charles Sull, Donald's son, is the co-founder of CultureX alongside his father. He graduated from Harvard College and has advised senior executive teams of multinational organizations on cultural management, strategy development, and strategy execution. Charles conducts regular research at MIT, and his work has been featured in prominent publications such as the Economist, Harvard Business Review, and MIT Sloan Management Review. Together with his father, Charles created the MIT Sloan Management Review/Glassdoor Culture 500, which is the largest systematic study of corporate culture ever conducted.


Both Donald and Charles Sull have collaborated on numerous articles for MIT Sloan Management Review, including their recent work on the LEGO Group's cultural transformation. Their combined expertise in organizational culture, strategy, and the application of AI in business management has positioned them as leading voices in the field of corporate culture analysis and improvement.



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Categorization


This genioux Fact post is classified as Nugget Knowledge which means: Ultra-concentrated wisdom, easily remembered and applicable to your daily life.


Type: Nugget Knowledge, Free Speech



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“genioux facts”: The online program on "MASTERING THE BIG PICTURE OF THE DIGITAL AGE”, g-f(2)3301, Fernando Machuca and Perplexity, January 21, 2025, Genioux.com Corporation.



The genioux facts program has built a robust foundation with over 3,300 Big Picture of the Digital Age posts [g-f(2)1 - g-f(2)3300].



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