{"id":4541,"date":"2014-05-06T08:03:17","date_gmt":"2014-05-06T06:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mymbloo.com\/cyhrma\/leadership-lessons-from-lego\/"},"modified":"2014-05-06T08:03:17","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T06:03:17","slug":"leadership-lessons-from-lego","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyhrma.org\/el\/leadership-lessons-from-lego\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership Lessons From LEGO"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Ken Perlman –<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a very lucky father of two girls, I feel that many of the lessons learned in fatherhood apply to change leadership. Here I share the parallels between building a complex LEGO set with my daughters and coaching my clients through transformational change.<\/p>\n

As my daughters and I tackled a three-day LEGO project, I realized that what makes these projects so fun and satisfying are the same things that help my clients love leading change in their organizations.<\/p>\n

Now, we all know \u201clove\u201d and \u201cchange\u201d don\u2019t get used in the same sentence very often, but some of the same principles that made for a wonderful, LEGO-filled weekend with my girls are also at work with my clients. These principles are present with my larger clients (thousands of employees around the globe) as well as my smaller ones (a few hundred employees in one location).<\/p>\n

So here they are \u2013 lessons in leadership courtesy of LEGO.<\/p>\n

Lesson #1:<\/strong>\u00a0Start with what success looks like.<\/strong>\u00a0LEGO provides a complete \u2013 and exciting \u2013 picture of the final product right there on the box. It always looks AWESOME.\u00a0There is little mention of the number of bags, number of pieces, number of steps, and so on (which would only deflate your excitement). You fall in love with the end result before you even buy. After buying the set, you feel that the finished project is just a few steps away because you already know what success looks like \u2013 and it looks AWESOME. Many times, executives outline the daunting and time-consuming strategies required to get from today to tomorrow \u2013 deflating excitement \u2013 rather than building momentum around the picture of the finished product. Most fail to paint or show a clear (AWESOME) picture of what success looks like. It\u2019s this picture that makes people fall in love with the idea; that makes them eager to spend their time putting all the pieces together to make it a happen.<\/p>\n

Lesson #2:\u00a0Consider interchangeable parts.<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s rare, but occasionally, there are missing LEGO blocks. Instead of stop-mode, these challenges put my daughters into innovation-mode \u2013 they\u00a0pull out their bucket of spare parts to find what we need and we keep building away. How many times have our colleagues said, \u201cThat won\u2019t work because \u2026\u201d or \u201cWe\u2019ve already tried that\u201d? \u00a0Although these excuses occasionally save us some time not repeating old mistakes, it\u2019s unusual that we go back to see what pieces (lessons, learning, accomplishments, etc.) can be reapplied. Often times people, tools, resources, and lessons are there for the picking, it\u2019s just rare that we go back to those buckets to get them.<\/p>\n

Lesson #3:\u00a0Instructions are only so helpful.<\/strong>\u00a0The instructions are great, usually. But there are cases where you simply cannot tell which round peg goes into which square hole (with LEGOS, literally). Whereas I turn the instructions round-and-round, flipping ahead to get another view, my daughters simply put things together as best they can. They say, \u201cLet\u2019s try it and see if it works.\u201d\u00a0This fearless experimentation is a critical element to accelerating innovation. What\u2019s the worst thing that could happen? With LEGOS, the consequences are nil. In many business or organizations there are real risks. But, more often than not, the main risk is not the unforeseen consequences, but in the risk of being seen as wrong.\u00a0By eliminating that fear, we increase our ability to iterate in fast cycles. It is key for leadership to encourage and reward those who experiment, learn, and build.<\/p>\n

Lesson #4:\u00a0It\u2019s more fun when more people are working together.<\/strong>\u00a0Working on a LEGO project on your own is great. But sharing the experience with my daughters (or more specifically them sharing it with me) is so much more fun. My clients find it easier to get 100 people to volunteer one hour each than to get any one person to find 100 free hours. The different people, perspectives, and experiences make for open collaboration. Each volunteer brings different strengths, allowing the innovation to go faster, further, and freer.<\/p>\n

Lesson #5:\u00a0The quality of the final product relies upon the input of imagination.<\/strong>\u00a0When I was growing up there were few custom LEGO parts, perhaps a wheel or a windshield. Today, there are a huge number of set-specific parts (e.g., tools, flip-up cockpits, weapon launchers, etc.). Yet my daughters still make modifications or, in their words, \u201cimprovements.\u201d One daughter built a LEGO motorcycle which was destroyed when she sent it down hardwood stairs.\u00a0Instead of being bummed out, she saw an opportunity. \u201cNow I can make it better,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cIt was too heavy to go as fast as I want it to.\u201d She stripped it down, leaned it out, and launched it again. At the end of the day, it all comes down to the builder\u2019s imagination.<\/p>\n

Look, as a leader, you set the tone for how your employees experience large-scale change. You could be the one that enables fearless (but informed) innovation and experimentation \u2013 or you can be the one holding up the instruction book saying, \u201cThat\u2019s not how we do it.\u201d The choice is yours.<\/p>\n

By the way, friends at LEGO, Star Wars X-Wing \u2026 Best. LEGO. Ever.<\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong>\u00a0http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/johnkotter\/2013\/09\/24\/leadership-lessons-from-lego\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Ken Perlman – As a very lucky father of two girls, I feel that many of the lessons learned in fatherhood apply to change leadership. Here I share the parallels between building a complex LEGO set with my daughters and coaching my clients through transformational change. As my daughters and I tackled a three-day LEGO […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3868,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-el"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyhrma.org\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyhrma.org\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyhrma.org\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyhrma.org\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyhrma.org\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyhrma.org\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyhrma.org\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyhrma.org\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyhrma.org\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyhrma.org\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}