Everything is awesome - Time to play at LEGO

LEGO was born in 1932 in Billund, a small windswept town in Jutland, Denmark, where its head office remains, and where around 2,000 employees from around the world get to live their dream of playing with small, brightly coloured plastic bricks. It’s an exciting time for the family-owned Danish icon as work on its ambitious new campus continues safely while the COVID-19 pandemic endures. After four years of planning and construction, Phase 1 was completed in October 2019 and saw two interconnected buildings open and 500 people move in.

The entire project is on course to complete in October 2021 and is an ambitious symbol of the LEGO Group’s values of creativity, fun and play – the LEGO name derives from the Danish leg godt: ‘play well’.

“There’s one aspect that is completely special to us: being playful. This is what defines a LEGO workplace,” LEGO’s workspace experience global design lead Sudhir Saseedharan told Wallpaper magazine. At the Billund Phase 1 opening party, Niels Christiansen, CEO of the LEGO Group, reiterated that: “It’s important we provide our talented colleagues with an environment that is playful and inspires creativity and innovative thinking.”

Another brick in the wall

These values are made real through LEGO’s culture of openness, collaboration and connectivity between colleagues, including the way it is managing the Billund project. LEGO’s approach is the envy of many project managers who aspire to a better way of working, and is inspirational for those outside the business who are brought in as partners to work on its projects.

Inspiration for the Billund campus design came from the office of Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, grandson of LEGO founder Ole Kirk Christiansen and chairman of Kirkbi, LEGO’s parent company. In this office hangs a picture of a boy holding up his LEGO creation. The buildings incorporate LEGO-shaped bricks in the exterior walls, and two gigantic yellow LEGO bricks sit atop the roof. Inside, the layout is flexible. The two buildings that are open include all the usual office, team and breakout areas any cool company needs, including play areas, lounges and outdoor parks open to the public. When complete, the campus will include a ‘People House’, with a large auditorium, fitness centre, games areas, café and staff accommodation, and will span 54,000m2, with office space covering 25,000m2. The current Phase 2 involves the interior fit-out, including a permanent dining area and shop, while Phase 3 will focus on the People House.

Anneke Beerkens, senior workplace anthropologist at the LEGO Group, worked with employees to design their ultimate workplace: “In the same way you build with LEGO bricks, we took elements our people love and brought them all together to create something unique. For example, employees told us that they wanted the freedom to choose an environment that suited them best for whatever they were working on, but they also like to stay close to teammates. So we built team ‘neighbourhoods’, which are a mix of individual and collaborative workspaces.”

A true partnership

The Billund campus project is a partnership between Kirkbi, CF Møller Architects, engineer Niras and contractor CM Hansen. Morten Pedersen, Kirkbi’s project director, created the original brief in 2015 and set the tone for a collaborative, open and trusting approach to the project. Pedersen says Kirkbi wanted to promote an equal partnership between the engineer and architect, so unusually the client had split contracts – one with each. “Partnership is a key value at LEGO,” he says.

“It’s very important to talk the walk – to talk about what kind of walk you want the project team to do,” he explains. “From day one, the project has been developed in close dialogue and collaboration with them. The fact that we wanted them all on board in the early stages to get their recommendations on the brief is very unusual [for non-LEGO projects].”

All were involved in twice-weekly meetings where Pedersen demanded an open dialogue. A dedicated project management office was created in CF Møller’s office, comprising a team of around 60 staff drawn from the architect’s practice, the engineering firm, and Pedersen’s and LEGO’s office, who worked together side-by-side. To have everyone around the same table in a dedicated project space helped to foster close, effective collaboration and creativity, explains Pedersen. It also sped up decision-making.

Face-to-face discussion is Pedersen’s preferred way of getting a project done. “It’s then more a decision process than a design process. You have the ideas, you decide which ideas to go for, and you get a faster design,” he says. “It was all about building a successful project together. You get ownership of the project and you get the engineers and architects understanding each other. Knowledge sharing is so fast.”

Pedersen himself benefited from a high level of trust from LEGO’s owners, the Kristiansen family, who, once they had signed off the initial design, gave him the freedom to run the project as he saw fit. “I had a full mandate from the family. I told them about the concept and they said: ‘You just go on with it.’” It has meant the design process could press ahead with zero challenges. “Being a family-run business affords Kirkbi the freedom to put culture first,” admits Pedersen. “It’s a definite advantage.”

When we collaborate, we prosper

Pedersen made clear to his partners that he needed to have people with the right attitude on the project team – those whose professionalism would allow them to speak openly and fairly so that trust would be created and nothing would need to be “covered up”. What mattered would be their dedication to the project, and getting the best work done. When there is a culture of trust, “people get so motivated and say what they feel”, he says. “The most important thing is to have trust from everyone on the team and expect the best from them. Everyone wants to be pushed to be the best.”

Trust also means that project team members won’t start arguments, because open dialogue means expectations can be aligned, and project team members have the confidence to be bolder with their ideas. “We focus on delivery, but also on how to get the best product created by the most motivated people. You give people a clear direction with a clear framework, and you show you believe in them,” Pedersen explains.

Placing such an emphasis on the culture of a project team might perhaps seem alien to many project managers, but it is what distinguishes the LEGO approach.

“People focus too much on the deliverables and timelines rather than the social part,” says Pedersen. Although he realises that, with a brand as appealing as LEGO’s, it makes it easier for people to get excited about working on a project. “We take advantage of that,” he says.

LEGO’s philosophy, he explains, is “to never forget the child – and that means humour. Humour is a great part of LEGO. I’ve been here 10 years, with four years in Kirkbi working with the family, and Kjeld [Kristiansen] is so open to saying that play is really the key thing in human life. Curiosity and play is how we develop things and it creates joy. When we collaborate, we each prosper, and that is our company identity.” Yet the most important success criterion of a project for him is also its biggest challenge. “It’s a hard nut to crack,” he admits.

Trust means project efficiency

Klaus Toustrup is a partner and project lead at CF Møller Architects, whose submission won the campus design competition in 2015. He says that LEGO was looking for a highly flexible building that could keep pace with a dynamic organisation that is continually changing and innovating. Initially, Kirkbi didn’t want a showy LEGO icon, more a design that could incorporate some of the LEGO values and reflect that the company’s purpose for being is children and play. In the design process, the LEGO owner showed a painting of a proud boy and his LEGO creation; this became a benchmark and inspiration for all parties to the project. As a reminder, Toustrup made a copy of the child’s painting and pinned it up in the project area, together with the LEGO brand values.

Unsurprisingly, LEGO bricks served as an inspiration for the design, from interior details such as helping with wayfaring, to the conceptual view of seeing the LEGO office as a little city of elements put together. Yet Toustrup found it was LEGO’s strong values that were inspiring.

“LEGO thinks with its values, and as architects it’s quite nice to have this as a framework. For me, it was very inspiring to see the LEGO culture not just in the design, but in the way we collaborate. In many ways this was about the sense of trust and developing the project as an open process, with a shared office with the engineers and LEGO.”

The building blocks of trust

Another unusual approach was to bring the contractor KG Hansen in from the start as part of the design discussions. “It worked very well,” says Toustrup. “Often with these processes there can be a lot of struggle, and none of that has happened because of the way the project has been set up.” It’s something he is now trying to replicate on other projects.

“The challenge is that you need this trust element. When you have trust, people don’t hide problems and we solve them together. Kirkbi has a great role in creating the right atmosphere. Instead of people protecting themselves they are being open and honest. It helps people work very efficiently and gives you agility,” says Toustrup.

It also stops conversations becoming destructive and enables team members to flag up worries that can then be solved collectively. “There are none of the usual boundaries between the architects, the contractor and the engineers,” he notes.

One of the biggest design challenges was working out how LEGO’s requirement for the buildings to be flooded with daylight could meet with high standards of sustainability. Big windows potentially create a lot of heat, and the buildings need to be cooled down, which consumes a lot of energy. The balance between allowing daylight in and a sustainable building design led to the creation of a self-shading cooling system through the base design of the office façade – curtain walls with aluminium frames that change in depth depending on the direction of the sun on the building. It was a successful solution born from pragmatic collaboration between architect, engineer and contractor.

A shared 3D model

The project team used an Autodesk Revit 3D model that they shared and updated live, where contractor, engineer, architect, client and subcontractors could see what was going on at any time. “Sitting in the same room and co-creating it was a great way to avoid mistakes,” says Toustrup.

Nikolaj Holst-Hvitved, project director at engineer Niras, explains that being able to work on the 3D model together and in real time was a first. Usually on projects like these, the engineers and architects would work on their respective models and exchange them once a week, by which time the model is a week old.

Sitting alongside the contractor in the project office afforded some advantages to Holst-Hvitved’s engineering design team, because all the solutions could be discussed with them and their suggestions built into the design. “It meant we can agree solutions to the project along the way and everyone is happy and ready to start construction,” he says. “It’s better that we can solve things without arguments. On other projects, the atmosphere isn’t always that nice.”

When he speaks to Project at the tail-end of April from the construction site, Holst-Hvitved says most of the buildings are finished, with work continuing undisturbed on-site despite the social distancing measures the Danish government has enforced because of COVID-19. “A lot of our collaboration is happening online anyway,” he explains. “It has not been such a big issue because all the people on the project have known each other for the past three or four years.” The project office at CF Møller was used for two years. “During construction the project team is much smaller and we do not have the same need for a project office.” The project team continue to meet regularly and have follow-up meetings weekly (online for now).

High ambitions

The main bulk of the remaining work is on the interior. The original time frame for the project has been adjusted because of organisational changes at LEGO that brought a delay as more office rooms were needed, but the autumn 2021 completion date is set in stone.

“The client has had a lot confidence in us and is open-minded,” says Holst-Hvitved. He has been impressed that the focus has been on creating a good project rather than becoming fixated at all costs on the deliverables agreed in the original scope of work, which might not be best for the project as it unfolds. “It would be nice if we had more clients with that mindset,” he notes. “It produces better work, for sure.” Holst-Hvitved admits he had been hoping to work with LEGO for some time. “They are a client that has high ambitions and who want to do something extra.”

Its approach is something all project managers can learn from and aspire to.

LEGO Serious Play

LEGO Serious Play (LSP) is a type of training that provokes managers into alternative ways of solving a problem and involves trained coaches giving participants LEGO bricks to build models. Micael Buckle, chief executive of Danish consultancy Inthrface, who has led hundreds of LSP sessions, including those for project teams, explains that the method helps people look at a situation or a problem in a different way. By using your imagination and physical blocks, you are able to tap into a different thinking mode. “LSP has always got a purpose,” he says.

Recent work has included sessions with the team of a large offshore wind turbine project, and a four-hour workshop for a pharmaceutical company’s 60-strong project team on process mapping and optimisation, where LSP was used to create a physical overview of the project.

Seen from the outside, the models may seem overwhelming and even disorganised, but to the participants who will be working on the projects afterwards, they were able to see which parts of the project were connected, where bottlenecks may occur and how to prioritise to avoid a lack of resources.

Another project management workshop involved individual team members building LEGO models explaining who they are, what their competencies are, what they can contribute and what they would like to become better at.

“This is a great way for a new team to get to know each other better, for any team to create security within the team and to see patterns in how the team is connected, or maybe should be connected to excel at what they do,” Buckle explains.

Using LEGO to teach project management

Ian Stewart, senior lecturer at the University of Manchester, designs learning activities using LEGO to create model experiences while building actual model objects.

“To learn project management, a person has to actually manage a project. At the ‘front’ end when designing a LEGO-based learning experience, I have to know the intended learning outcome. The problem driving the learning has to be real and the scenario created must have sufficient realism for learners to see a connection between what they are doing and actual project work.”

Like building with LEGO, project management is about putting something new into the world, solving problems and battling constraints. “At the ‘back’ end when it is finished, with careful debriefing, I must ensure that they make sense of that experience and its relation to the reality of project work. In between the front and back end, ‘realities’ is the ‘intermediate impossible’. Here is where the LEGO comes in. Following the rules of the activity leads to the creation of objects that might be impossible in the real world, but via completion of the objects comes completion of the learning.”

For example, the learning activity intended to teach scheduling creates a multi-storey office building with a rooftop garden, but no stairs, staffed entirely by pirates. “The work with LEGO is an intermediate stage between the motivating problem and the satisfaction of the learning outcomes. The LEGO model is a representation of their learning experience, without which the learning would be more difficult. There is also the element of fun. Even though the LEGO is for a serious purpose, it takes me back to the time when learning and playing were the same thing.”