Over 70% of homes have at least one stray brick buried deep in a sofa or hiding in the dusty corner of a cupboard. With a net profit of 16.7bn DKK in 2025, LEGO is a serious business.
Alongside bacon and beer, LEGO is one of Denmark’s greatest exports, some might even say ‘Probably the best toy in the world!’. The LEGO phenomenon began in 1932 when Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen, who believed in the value of play, decided that the best kind of toys are those that can be built, and then rebuilt. Stimulating creativity and imagination, whilst developing character.
There’s much we can learn from LEGO as adults. The four letter name LEGO is derived from leg godt, meaning ‘play well’ in Danish, and ‘I study’ or ‘I construct’ in Latin. Underpinning the name is the company slogan ‘Only the best is good enough’. An admiral intention, but one that nearly led to the iconic toy’s collapse in 2004.
Stepping on the brick: How LEGO stumbled before building success
LEGO’s culture of continuous innovation and excellence blocked cost saving initiatives and meant that despite the popularity of the product, LEGO came close to spending its way into collapse. At one point, 10,000 permutations of individually coloured and moulded bricks were in production, requiring stockpiles of costly dyes, chemicals and moulding machines, all supplied by a massive 11,000 different suppliers. Designers continually dreamt up new products without regard for costs of materials, production and distribution.
The leadership lesson: Focus is a superpower
Innovation without boundaries is just chaos. When your team is juggling too many priorities, you aren’t necessarily being creative; you’re being inefficient. The first step to LEGO’s success was admitting that they had lost their focus.
Brick by brick: How LEGO became successful
How LEGO tackled these issues can provide valuable lessons in leadership. In 2004, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the founder’s grandson, stepped aside and Jorgen Vig Knudstorp replaced him as CEO. He quickly discovered that just 30 products generated 80% of sales whilst over 1,500 redundant products were stockpiled. He set about tackling the outdated and inefficient supply chain, geared to distributing to small independent retailers in an era of Wal-Mart and Toys R Us.
Alongside the clinical changes to cost he had to transform the culture of a close-knit family-owned business whilst preserving the loyalty of its workforce. The senior team adopted an approach of complete transparency and began by tackling the costly supply of coloured resins. On occasions designers would specify a design requiring a few kilos of a specific resin, not appreciating that a minimum three tonne order would be placed leaving the company with €10,000 of unusable resin. The heads of product development and supply chain addressed the the issue together. Their solution was to simplify the variety of coloured components and in doing so, halved the company’s resin costs and reduced the supplier roster by 80%. Proving that huge efficiencies can be achieved with minimal compromise to the customer experience.
LEGO team building activities
LEGO’s success story is a powerful case study for management development. Coupled with practical exercises using LEGO bricks, it can create an amusing and impactful leadership session.
Fresh Tracks offers bespoke facilitated workshops that turn the success of LEGO into a roadmap for your own organisation. Our expert workshop facilitators are ready to help you build a strong and resilient team, one brick at a time. We use the LEGO story as a framework to help your team:
- Identify hidden communication gaps
- Build trust through collaborative problem-solving
- Create a shared vision for your “future build”
Find out more about our LEGO inspired programmes by getting in contact with us on 01920 822 220 or making an enquiry.
