Why LEGO?? bricks aren't just for children to play with

Jan 2025

In 2010, I joined the LEGO Group as a sales manager for their Southeast Asia region. As part of my job, I attend local LEGO Robotics Competitions for primary and secondary school students across the 6 markets I was responsible for, and engage with local school leaders, and partners.

My first such event was the annual robotics championship finals, held at Kaohsiung City in Taiwan. As a relatively new joiner, I just mainly hung around my customers, and also went to be a judge for some of the segments of the competition.

Eyes Open, and Mind Blown Away

It was an eye opener to say the least. I see 9 year old girls taking apart their LEGO robots to change its arms into claws; I see 12 year old boys jumping up and down with joy and screaming at the top of their lungs when their LEGO robot successfully completes a mission.

At a student booth, I saw an 'intensely silent' conversation raging on. Let me explain. The booth belonged to an all girls team of secondary school students from Saudi Arabia. The next booth belonged to a all boys team of primary school students from South Korea.

It was clear neither team were very confident speaking in English, but yet as I watched with fascination, they were interacting!

One of the boys pointed to a robot claw that he was curious about. One of the girls didn't miss a beat, knew what he wanted to ask, and pulled up her laptop and pointed to a series of graphical user interface programming page to show him how their team made the claw do what it was supposed to. The boys eyes widened, and he started to chat excitedly in Korean with the other boys. They hastily retreated back to their booth next door to re-jig their own robot, but not before bowing and thanking their new found friends from Saudi Arabia.

Like I said, 'intensely silent'.

Without the benefit of a common language, one would imagine the students struggle, misunderstand each other and just get really frustrated. But no, they did not. Why?

Because their 'common language' was the System of LEGO. They all went through the same practice back home huddled in their respective schools robotic clubs, they all learnt the same software, and they all learn the same 'rules' on how LEGO robots fit together and what makes the robots move or complete tasks.

James, why are you telling us about systems?

Well, intrepid reader, I think you might know where I am leading to. Modern professional life is governed by systems, here are some obvious ones ?

(1) We ALL know if we don't enable the Autosave function in Microsoft Word, the report we toiled over the weekend is just gone when my computer crashes;

(2) We ALL know when our leader is not his usual self today at the weekly huddle - a change in his tone of voice, a shift in the body language all give not-so-subtle clues;

(3) We ALL know that if we don't file our performance appraisals on time, no one gets their end of year bonuses on time either.

How about the less obvious ones?

(1) A team delays delivery of a key product feature, but because they felt they could address the issue in time, fails to communicate in a timely manner to the marketing team, the sales team, and the finance team. This resulted in a delayed time to market, and lost revenue; (Operations System)

(2) A new leader joins an organisation and immediately makes sweeping changes and questions everything. Soon his initiatives get stuck, and he gets frustrated. His leader starts to wonder if he was the right hire; (Soft power systems)

(3) A sales manager, unsatisfied with his leader's performance review rating of him, decides he wants to take it up with HR and during the meeting insisted that his leader's assessment is wrong. Soon, the leader at a personnel calibration meeting, expresses doubts about keeping this sales manager to the other department heads, who start to distant themselves from the sales manager; (People relationship systems)

(4) An organisation launched their new 3 year business strategy. Baffled at the lack of progress on many of the strategic initiatives, the leader calls for a meeting with the department heads. At the meeting, he asked point blank the reasons for the delay. He heard 2 department heads who were not sure what the leader expected to see as an outcome. 1 department leader updated that he was waiting on the other 1's team to finish their work. 2 other department heads did not speak up at all. (Strategy-implementation system)

What a System is - in simple terms

There are various definitions of systems in the business literature, but I really like this one because it's simple:

A System is a group of elements,

that come together and are interconnected,

to serve a purpose or function,

and operates under a set of rules or guidelines.

Everything, from the girls' LEGO robot, to the Solar System, to our human heart, and yes, to modern organisations (and teams) are all systems.

Circling back to LEGO bricks for Adults in the Workplace

Often, Teams at work, just see themselves as the Elements, as that is readily observable, and maybe the Connections. A well functioning System (in this case a Team), also needs to understand clearly its purpose, and also what operating rules it wishes to have.

Why LEGO Seriousplay model building can help teams get a breakthrough when Post-Its aren't good enough

LEGO model building activities, can have a unique value here:

(1) Teams get to describe what goes on at work, in a very concrete, very observable way, including Purpose, and Rules;

(2) Once the model is observable, participants now have a psychologically safe distance, to talk about what they have built, and share their perspectives as represented in their models;

(3) As each team member shares, the others listen -- 'Forced Active Listening', so every participant gets a voice, not just the loud ones;

(4) It allows each team member to dig deeper and represent in physical form, emotional, social or psychological hurdles that do not get discussed at a regular meeting.

Writing "Our purpose is to deliver widgets" on a post-it is MUCH LESS engaging and insightful than to build a model that describes what happens when widgets get delivered (or do not), and how that outcome affects other elements (team members, processes, rules).

Conclusion

While many of us may see LEGO as child's play, it is a powerful and insightful way to help teams understand their 'system' of working, from

the Elements (getting to know each team member more deeply);

to the Connections ( how each team member's work impact someone else's);

to the Purpose (getting alignment of why the team exists, and what it needs to accomplish);

and finally

to the Rules (what are some agreed rules to help us make decisions and move forward if we get stuck?).

Reach out if you would like to explore your Team's System and helping them get unstuck.

James CK Ching is a Certified LEGO Seriousplay Facilitator with 23 years experience working in large corporations and leading teams across 3 continents.

Contact [email protected] to find out more.