Lessons From Lego

I have a son who is an AFOL.?For the uninitiated, an AFOL is an “Adult Fan of Lego”.?My son has been building Lego models for over a decade, and we have invested untold dollars in support of his habit.?(These models ain’t cheap.)?Thankfully, he is now a full-time participant in the workforce and is indulging his hobby with his own money.

So, as a pleasant (but not totally unexpected) surprise, my son bought me a Lego set for Christmas.?It was a model of the 1970 Ferrari 512M sports car, part of the “LEGO Speed Champions” series, and I was enthralled.?In the rush of the holidays and sandwiched between all the things that adults do to fill their schedule, I made time to build it.

(Full disclosure here:?I played with Legos as a boy.?However, my funds were limited and my sets were a bit more basic than the ones you’ll find today—mostly blocks of various sizes, shapes and colors with little of the special-built pieces that sets come with today.?Still, I would build, destroy, and build again, fueled by an imagination seeded with visions of alien space craft, wacky race cars and haunted houses.)

The Ferrari set has 291 pieces to it (child’s play—it’s for ages 8+).?But upon opening the box, I felt like it was the first day of school.?In addition to a sheet of decals and the fairly thick instruction booklet, there were three bags filled with the tiny, plastic pieces of red, white, black, and gray, that except for the cockpit canopy and the dismembered driver minifigure, looked nothing like the picture on the box.?

However, I bravely dug in, and in a mere 90 minutes (give or take) I had completed my first Lego model in decades.

The experience was very satisfying, and as I worked through the process it occurred to me how building a Lego model echoes the journey of completing an IT project.?Along those lines, I’ve noted five takeaways from my Lego experience to keep in mind when considering project success.

• There is a picture showing the finished product.?It REALLY helps to envision what you are building ahead of time.?Knowing your goal and having a feeling for what the future state will look like informs every step of the build process.?Lego knows that when the detailed instructions might be confusing, taking a glance at the picture on the box will usually set things straight.
• There are step-by-step instructions.?Just as critical as the end vision, it is equally important to have an execution plan complete with tasks, sequence and priority.?The Lego instruction manual is proscriptive in telling you what to do, where to start and what to do with the pieces.?I challenge the most experienced AFOL to build the model exactly like the picture on the box without following the instructions (unless you want to build something totally from your imagination, which I wholeheartedly recommend and might be the subject of a future blog post).
• The steps are grouped into manageable efforts.?The creators of Lego realize the importance of setting short-term goals on the way to long-term results.?The instruction booklet groups the steps into sections that represent subassemblies of the larger model.?In doing so, the builder is “rewarded” with small successes and feelings of accomplishment—motivational events that build the confidence to move forward without feeling overwhelmed.
• There are components that are built that are not visible.?I was amazed to learn that many of the “subassemblies” that I took so much care to build were actually hidden from view once the model was finished.?These components had a purpose behind the scenes.?For one, they gave a sense of heft and realism to the model, but they also provided a foundation to the other parts that are visible.?Within the realm of IT projects, there are many tasks which are never seen nor appreciated but are essential to success nonetheless.
• There are extra pieces!?This is no small thing. ?Lego knows that its audience consists of humans with questionable fine motor skills who will undoubtedly drop a grey colored piece into the grey carpet.?This care to offer a level of redundancy or a backup plan to help mitigate risk is critical to any project, because, as we know, “things happen”.

I’m sure there are many other cogent lessons we can draw from what others might see as “play time”.?But as for me, perhaps the best lesson of all was that I learned to embrace the joy of doing something for no other reason than to have fun.?The little red Ferrari with the smiling minifigure behind the wheel sits on my desk as a testament to that.