Tag: lego

Legos, Change Management, and Fitting Into a New Vision (5-20-26)

Our last entry was about Legos, change management, and making the next step easy to take.  This week is about helping Lego pieces and people fit into a new and different vision.  

I first heard about Brad Barber about a year ago.  He is a Lego builder with a knack of being able to turn any set he gets his hands on into a Millenium Falcon, the famous ship from Star Wars.  He does this by creatively rearranging the pieces from that set only.  No outside pieces are allowed.  Simba becomes the Millenium Falcon. Cinderella’s dress becomes the Millenium Falcon.  Dinosaurs become the Millenium Falcon.

Let’s connect things.  In the world of work, there are a lot of pieces including employees, processes, and tech.  Often, they are configured in a specific way, so people assume they can only be that thing, much like many people would assume a Simba Lion King set could only be Simba.  The truth is, we all have the ability to grow, change, and become part of new things if we are guided in the right direction.

This all makes me think of Brad’s work.  The beauty of his work is that he can see the pieces for what they are, understand their value, and also how they might exist in a new design and system.  He doesn’t break the pieces.  He doesn’t twist and pull them into new shapes.  He understands their strengths and leverages them differently.  He designs something, so he can leverage all their strengths to achieve a new goals.  One of the most important parts of change management is connecting with people to help them understand how they are valued AND how they could fit into the new system.  This shifts change from something to be afraid of to being something we can be part of.

The challenge: As you lead change, how will you help others see where they fit?

Bonus thought: AI is one of the forces changing our vision for how work gets done.  I can’t speak for all areas, but I can speak a bit for market research.  It’s true that AI is changing and will continue to change the way do research and gather insights.  At the same time, the value and the core of what makes market researchers great will always be there and will always be important.  Things like curiosity, the ability to define business questions, understanding decisions in context, and influencing without authority will be constants even as we evolve.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Legos, Change Management, and Clear Milestones (4-22-26)

Last week we kicked off our series about Legos and change management by focusing on knowing what you’re building.  This week is about breaking Lego builds down into sections and having clear milestones.

My parents bought me this Spider-man set a few years ago for Christmas and it’s one of my all-time favorites.  It is comprised of 2099 pieces.  Imagine how difficult that would have been if all of the pieces would have just been mixed in together.  That would have been horrible!  Luckily, Lego doesn’t do that.  They break the build down into digestible sections.  Each section has a bag with the pieces you need for that section.  You then work through the instruction book section by section until you’re done.

Let’s connect this to work.  How often have you been involved in an organization wide initiative and been utterly confused on how to execute it?  That’s happened to me a lot throughout the years.  It’s almost like they dump a bunch of info (Lego bricks 😉) on you and hope you just figure it out.

Now, think about the time when you’ve been involved in something complicated, but they did a nice job of breaking it down into digestible sections.  You could see how all of the milestones would add up to get you to where you need to go.  You also were clear on what you needed to accomplish for each milestone.  What impact did this have on you?  I’ve found in these situations I was less confused and could put my effort toward executing vs figuring out what the heck was going on.

The challenge- How can we break complicated initiatives down into easier to execute milestones?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry