LEGO (15 page)

The duo worked on various implementation strategies before being teamed with Robert Rasmussen at LEGO. Rasmussen was the leader of the concept team for LEGO Mindstorms and had experience working with academics, having partnered with the MIT Media Lab to develop the robotics kit.

At the core of LEGO Serious Play is Seymour Papert’s theory of constructionism. The MIT professor theorized that people learn by building something that helps explain and define relationships. His work, in turn, was in part based on the ideas of the famed Swiss philosopher and psychologist Jean Piaget, who suggested that knowledge is the sum total of our experiences.

The LEGO bricks are what connect those theories in practice. The participants build sculptures and explain their constructions through metaphor and storytelling. Employees who might have difficulty with a face-to-face confrontation can instead express their feelings by placing a minifigure in a particular spot on a baseplate.

Kristiansen established a separate entity from LEGO, entitled Executive Discovery, to fund the new initiative. Rasmussen was named president, and Serious Play launched in 2001 as the first LEGO product designed exclusively for adults.

“The kind of creativity and learning we instinctively accomplished through play, when we were children, is exactly the skill needed in today’s business meeting rooms,” said Bart Victor in a September 2001 press release from LEGO. “We’ve turned the LEGO idea of open-ended play into a model for business strategy.”

Rasmussen stayed on with Serious Play until 2003, before leaving to start an independent consulting group, Rasmussen and Associates. One of his last trainees was a former Royal Navy lieutenant named Gary Mankellow. I reach out to him because he happens to live just outside of Kansas City, and he knows why LEGO Serious Play hasn’t yet caught on in the United States.

But right now Gary is only worried that the battery on his laptop is going to die again. A picture of a LEGO duck is on the screen; and our neighbors in the coffee shop in the Plaza shopping district of Kansas City look on curiously—as likely to be attracted by the image as by Gary’s slight British accent and his striking white hair. Before the computer can shut down, he talks as fast as he can

“It’s universal and it’s tactile, so when you combine that with business communication strategies, I was instantly sold,” says Gary.

Gary is not an adult fan of LEGO. The closest he got to LEGO as a kid was Tinker Toys. He is a business consultant, having launched Dynamic Adult Learning in 1996 when he left his sales trainee position at Pfizer. In fact, none of the other people he trained with were AFOLs. They were professionally trained consultants willing to spend $3,000 to learn if LEGO actually had business applications.

“I remember during my training that I was trying to build a model about managing. I’d never built with LEGO before and I couldn’t find the cogs I needed to make a moving machine. I got very frustrated because when the time was called, I wasn’t done. When it came time to tell my story, I said that I keep building these things, but I never get them finished. That was something I had never realized about my business,” says Gary.

He has the smooth polish of a motivational speaker—exactly the type of partner LEGO sought for the launch of Serious Play. The idea was to use established consultants to legitimize a children’s toy for use by adult executives to solve real business problems.

“The majority of people who want to do this likely can’t have LEGO Serious Play be their only source of income. And LEGO would probably argue that they have always wanted it to be one of the tools in a consultant’s bag,” says Gary.

Accordingly, LEGO has struggled to identify what it has in Serious Play. So it makes absurd sense that a British expat living in Kansas City would be one of the fifty-three trained partners in twenty-seven countries. While consulting sessions involve LEGO, the point is not necessarily to get corporations to buy more of LEGO’s product, but instead to use LEGO’s product to transform their business. At the same time, the audience is adults, very serious adults, a decidedly different consumer than five- to nine-year-old boys.

“So the challenge for LEGO Serious Play is that it’s still in its infancy, but they’re starting to work with some major multinational firms like Shell and BASF. But how does this create business for LEGO? It’s the instructors forming the partnerships, and often there’s a limited window of contact,” says Gary.

Originally a subsidiary, Serious Play was folded under the education division of the company. A year after Rasmussen left in 2003, the training program was put on hold in the United States. It seemed as though LEGO was constantly revising the concept. Although Serious Play has more traction in LEGO’s home country of Denmark, companies in the United States still appear wary about using a consulting session that involves a child’s toy.

“We did something like that once. I only remember that I wasn’t happy with what I built. That’s about the extent of what I took away from it,” says Bob when I ask if he’s ever done any training with LEGO.

Another possible explanation for the lack of buy-in from the corporate sector is the high cost of LEGO itself. Gary estimates that for a typical daylong session with eight to ten people, he’s going to need about $2,000 worth of LEGO bricks. That’s a heavy investment from a potential client before he’s even asked for a consulting fee. Although at that price, his case for presentations is a Castle fan’s dream, with forty skeletons designed to represent the skeletons in a corporate closet.

At the same time, LEGO bricks are also how Gary usually makes a sale. He asks potential clients to picture a duck made from LEGO.

“When you ask people to build a duck, you’ll get six different ducks. It’s like going into a business meeting and saying, ‘Okay guys, we want to talk about the budget.’ Everybody immediately has their own picture of the budget. People get that right away,” says Gary.

Google is arguably the most prominent example of a company that believes the creativity inspired by building with LEGO bricks is tied to business innovation. The first server cases for the technology company were built out of toy bricks because they were cheap and modular. As Google grew, so did the influence of LEGO’s values at the company. In attending LEGO-sponsored workshops, Google has come to embody the idea of taking play and design more seriously. The New York City headquarters have a LEGO build room, where clear tubs hold elements, sorted by color and part, on rows of white shelves. LEGO mosaics of co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page hang on the wall. But the room isn’t just a corporate perk; it’s a clear message that creativity can come from building. This is what Gary hopes for every time he approaches a new company, that he can materially impact the culture of the organization.

The relationship between Gary and LEGO is called a partnership, but it now seems to be closer to that of franchiser and franchisee. In addition to the training fee, LEGO instituted an annual licensing fee for LEGO Serious Play and requires that a partner complete five days of training. That licensing fee allows the use of LEGO’s logo and access to marketing materials. At the same time, LEGO also began offering an in-house license facilitator training program, where companies could send a human resources person or company trainer for a day of training at a cost of $800. Despite new costs and the potential for competition from the very companies he’s trying to attract as clients, Gary continues on as a LEGO Serious Play partner for one reason: he believes in what he is selling.

And although Gary is not an adult fan of LEGO, it would seem that his relationship with the company is not that different from AFOLs’. LEGO has almost all the power, dictating the terms of the relationship as they constantly retool the Serious Play program. At the same time, LEGO Serious Play doesn’t seem to offer the promise of a lot of money or even celebrity, but it does have exclusivity. As one of only fifty-three trained partners, Gary has something that adult fans crave, and that is access. But he doesn’t want to use LEGO bricks to build the Chrysler building. He wants to use them to rebuild Chrysler.

The top of the bookcase in our living room overflows with LEGO. In the foreground is the zombie farmer vignette, with Indiana Jones sets and dinosaurs piled up in the background.

The mantel in our living room is slowly filling up with my creations, as I try to keep them away from the jaws of my dog and the paws of my cat. A ring of trucks encircles the base of our television, while the biplane I built several months back is starting to get dingy. Unattended LEGO bricks magnetically attract dust.

Kate orders me to clean everything up, but suggests that I turn the top of the bookcase into a rotating LEGO display. It not only is larger than the mantel, but it sits in the corner of the living room. As this is one of the few limitations she’s put on my building, I agree without argument. It will still be one of the first things people see when they walk into the house. And I start to think that we need something more impressive to display, which at my building level means buying a large kit as opposed to designing an original creation.

I feel slightly devious when I bring home the LEGO Creator Beach House, a yellow home with a black roof that has tons of architectural details. It’s the set that I thought my urban planner wife would pick out as the one she wanted to build.

“Ooh, what’s that?” she asks, coming in the door. I have strategically left the Beach House box on the coffee table in our living room.

“Oh, just a new set. I was planning on building it tonight. Want to help?” I ask casually.

“Yes,” says Kate enthusiastically, turning over the box and getting lost in the details.

After a week of building by myself, I’m a bit anxious when we start ripping open the plastic bags together. And I quickly get frustrated, as we both search for parts and snap pieces onto the gray baseplate. I stop talking because I don’t want to lash out at my wife and grab a piece from her hand. I feel that I see connections faster than she does or notice parts in a bag that she continually stumbles past. She’s more deliberate, making sure that she is doing everything right. I’m an impulsive builder, trying to go faster in order to get to the next step. Our LEGO building apparently mirrors our personalities.

Kate stops talking, focusing on the picture-based instructions and building the base of the 522-piece house. The problem is that each step is based on the bricks that were laid in the preceding step. It quickly becomes obvious that this construction site can’t run without a competent foreman. To avoid an argument (we only fight over home improvement projects and driving directions), I relinquish the final say to Kate. So I become a brick monkey, grabbing the pieces that Kate needs and laying them out for her to take in rapid succession. This turns out to be effective; it’s the same strategy we used when laying a brick paver patio in our backyard over Labor Day weekend. After I leave to attend an evening rehearsal for the improvisational comedy troupe I belong to, she continues building.

I’ve always seen improv as my secret weapon as a builder. The ability to change directions immediately and find humor in unique situations is helpful when it comes to MOCs. Also, I can still laugh at myself when I have unconsciously built another camel. Perhaps most important, one of the cardinal rules of improv is to accept and build on whatever someone says in a scene. My experience with teamwork onstage makes it a lot easier to take the instructions of a LEGO foreman, find what she needs, and offer support during the building process.

“I finished the first floor. I hope you don’t mind,” says Kate when I return. She also holds up a tissue box she has cut in half to help her keep bricks close by without losing pieces to the couch. My wife is a builder. We leave the model unfinished and I promise to wait until she comes home the next day to start again. But I’m worse at sharing than I thought, because the next day I sit down in front of the construction site over lunch.
I’ll just pop in a few pieces.
And suddenly the roof is done and the Beach House is finished.

The desire for “just one more” has been reawakened. It’s that little voice that begs for another minute before bed, one more chapter in a book, or a bit more whipped cream. It’s a child’s voice, and it’s starting to pipe up with LEGO building. There’s always one more page in the instruction manual. And the truth is, you’re always one step closer to finishing.

When I tell Dave Sterling about the feeling, he sympathizes. “Whether it’s putting one more brick on, building one more set, or buying one more copy of a set... it’s a constant battle between the kid inside and the adult voice of reason. More often than not, the kid wins.”

When you become an adult, there is nobody older to tell you that you have to stop. You must be your own voice of reason, offering up a counter-voice—there’s work tomorrow or chores to do now. And it’s easy to see the voice of reason get drowned out, because it’s never offering a fun alternative. That is how you end up with a house full of LEGO, because it’s nice to feel like a kid for a while, indulging your wants in place of your needs.