Legos and Building and Rebuilding Ourselves (2-15-23)

This will be the final entry in the Lego series. We’ve looked at Legos as they relate to details/the big picture, evidence and trust, and mistakes being the beginning of something. This week is about Lego bricks and building and rebuilding ourselves.

The picture to the right is a bin filled with Legos. They come in all different sizes and shapes. Some are short. Some are long. Some are wheels. Some are oddly shaped. Some are bricks. Some are characters. Eventually, they are all brought together to build something. Maybe you build a robot or a car or a house or something else entirely. The beauty in all of this is that we can use those same blocks to build and rebuild over and over again, each time building something new and unique. You can take those exact same blocks and build masterpieces, only limited by your imagination.

What does this have to do with anything? What if I told you that your life is just a bunch of Lego bricks. All of the elements of who you are and all of the things you ever experienced are merely Lego bricks. Some are beautiful. Some are sad. Some are joyous. Some are painful. Some are quirky and unexpected. Some are calming. All of these “bricks” live inside of you. The beauty is that you have the ability to build and rebuild yourself over and over again. This is the beauty of being human. We’re not stagnant. We are always building. We always have the ability to rebuild ourselves and help rebuild each other. We can create glorious messy human masterpieces, only limited by our own imaginations. If that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is.

The challenge: What will you build with the Lego bricks of your life?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Legos, Mistakes, and How You Respond (2-8-23)

Last week was about Legos, evidence, and trust. This week is about Legos, mistakes, and how you respond. This entry is inspired by a story from Tacey Boucher.

Tacey reached out to me after the first Lego entry and shared this story. “Rob built the Mandalorian Razor Crest recently. It WAS missing an important piece. He was disappointed and concerned he’d have to fight or pay to get the piece. He contacted them and their response back was a letter detailing how the Empire had sabotaged their supply lines, but they had found another path and his piece would soon arrive. Rob was all smiles…it was suddenly almost worth it that the piece had been missing and the build was delayed. He thanked them for their reply and immediately got back a simple response: ‘This is the way.’” Not going to lie, after hearing that story I kind of want to tell Lego that they lost my Batman pieces just to see what cool stuff would happen. 😉

What does this have to do with anything? I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get it in my head that making the mistake is the end of the story. If I make a mistake, then everything else stops, and that situation is remembered as the time I screwed up. This mindset prevents me from taking chances and driving myself and others to be better. Do you ever find yourself in this mindset?

This week’s story is a reminder that making a mistake does not have to be the end. Instead, making a mistake can be a powerful turning point in the story. Lego made a mistake, owned it, and made it up to Rob in a caring and compassionate way. Since hearing this story from Tacey I’ve told dozens of people, and now I’m sharing it with you because it’s so powerful. The story is no longer about Lego making a mistake. It’s about how they responded. In a similar way, some of the most powerful work experiences are when I have made a mistake, and then responded in a powerful way or when someone else has fallen short only to get up and start kicking some butt. Does that ring true for you?

The challenge: How will you respond when you make a mistake?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Lego, Building Evidence, and Trust (2-1-23)

Last week was about Legos and the importance of BOTH the details and big picture. This week is about Legos, evidence, and trust.

I am very methodical when I do my Lego builds. I sort out the pieces into containers and then gather the required pieces for the step before ever connecting anything. Sometimes, I can’t initially find the piece I’m looking for. When this happens, I immediately assume that I either missed it or I have done something to lose it vs. Lego not having the right pieces. I assume this, because I have COMPLETE faith and trust in Lego. I’ve built dozens of their kits over my lifetime. I can count on them to ALWAYS have the right pieces and the right instructions to build something amazing. As a result, I trust Lego and their process. I can’t say I feel the same way about Lego knock-off companies. I’ve built with them before, and there have been missing pieces, bad instructions, etc. Those other non-Lego companies have never given me a reason to trust them, but they’ve asked me to anyway.

What does this have to do with anything? There are a couple of parallels we can draw. First, we can look at people in our life. How many of them are trustworthy Lego vs. the untrustworthy knock-off competitors? When have you been Lego vs. the knock-off competitors? I know I’ve played both roles. What can we do to become even more trustworthy?

The other connection is around this idea of “You just need to give it a chance. You just need to trust the process.” I feel this is something that is often said in Corporate America when there is some organizational change or pivot. I’ve always found this interesting, because it puts the burden on me to buy into something that isn’t proven. My question is always, “Why should I trust the process?” I’m not saying we should all be cynical and doubt everything. I do think it’s fair to expect evidence for claims that are being made. “Why should I trust that process? What has the organization shown me that makes me believe it will all work out?” If you’re leading any kind of organizational change management, the burden is on YOU to establish the reasons why someone should buy in. I trust Lego and its process, because its actions have earned that trust over time. As you lead organizational change management, have you and/or your team earned that trust to “follow the process” over time?

The challenges: How can we become more trustworthy? If you’re leading organizational change, what are YOU doing to provide evidence for why someone should trust the process?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Legos and the Importance of Details and the Big Picture (1-25-23)

This week we are going to kick off a series inspired by Legos. We’ll start by reflecting on building and the importance of both the details and big picture.

I have always been a fan of Legos. When I was a little kid, I would play with the basic building blocks for hours making robots, houses, and airplanes. When I was a teenager, I had a room filled with various Lego technic cars and motorcycles, Star Wars ships, and more. You can imagine how excited I was when I received a super awesome Lego set for Christmas. I put on some great music and went to work building. The picture to the left is my work in progress. I’m guessing you wouldn’t have been able to tell what it is on its own, because you are so zoomed into one section of the build. Luckily for me, I had the picture on the box showing me the final product and the instructions that could get me there. Finished product is the image on the right 😉

What does this have to do with anything? This story is about taking time to understand how the details ladder up to the bigger picture. It’s a great metaphor for pausing for a moment to step out of our small world to look at the larger world around us to ensure the details and big picture are connecting. Do you ever get lost in your own small world? I know I do. Sometimes this happens at work. I get so lost in the day-to-day details of keeping the train running that I don’t pause to look at a map to ensure the train is going in the right direction. This happens in life outside of work too. I get so lost in the day-to-day grind that I don’t realize that the things I’m doing every day in the moment may not be leading me to be the version of myself that I want to be.

This story is also a metaphor for being able to take a big picture vision and operationalize it. If Lego didn’t break down the Batman portrait into steps, I would not have been able to build it. How often have you had a large goal and not been able to figure out how to make it a reality? That happens to me, and it’s usually been because I didn’t take enough time to translate my goals to specific actions.

The challenge: How are you leveraging and connecting the big pictures and the details?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Lego Jeeps and Seeing More Than Imperfections (4-6-22)

This week we are going to start a series about lessons I’ve learned being a dad. We’ll start with building Lego Jeeps and seeing more than imperfections.

Alice (10) loves Legos. She’s built all kinds of cool things over the years. For Christmas she received a set to build a Jeep. The set had hundreds of pieces and was pretty tricky to put together. She basically locked herself in her room for a couple of days and didn’t come out until it was completed Alice was so excited and proud of herself. She rushed downstairs to show me. Now, I’m not proud of what I’m about to say. The first thing I did when I saw it was comment on how one of the wheels wasn’t right. That’s right. I ignored her enthusiasm. I ignored how hard she worked. I ignored that she managed to do something very difficult 99% correctly. Instead, I focused on the 1 thing she missed. Not going to lie, it kind of crushed her a bit, and then I was sad because I made her feel that way. After I realized what I had done, I apologized and switched gears to make sure she understood how excited and proud of her I was. After she understood that, we worked together to rebuild the wheel. By the end of the conversation, she felt better than when I initially crushed her heart.

What does this have to do with anything? Have you ever been Alice at work? I know I have. I’ve had things that I’ve worked on, been super excited about, and then brought them to someone only to have them point out all the flaws without acknowledging any of the effort that went into this. When this happened, I felt crushed. I felt like I hadn’t been seen. It also made me wonder if I really wanted to share things with that person again if they were going to crush it right away. To be clear, I’m not saying we should avoid giving criticism. What I think we can do a better job of is seeing the progress and effort vs. only focusing on imperfections. If we can recognize the initial effort and progress first, then I think it opens us up to have a more honest and meaningful conversation about where we can make progress and address flaws.

The challenge: How can we better balance recognizing progress vs. focusing on imperfections?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Legos and Rebuilding vs. Reimagining our “New Normal” (6-9-21)

We will be returning to work in our “new normal” in about a month, so for the next few weeks the blog will explore this topic from different angles. The hope See the source image is that if we can do some of this thinking now, we can set ourselves up for more success once we are in the thick of things. Today, we will focus on Legos and rebuilding vs. reimagining.

My daughters sometimes play with Legos outside in the garage. Recently, we cleaned the garage and all the Legos that were out. Violet was upset about this and said things like, “Do you know how long that took me to build? Do you know how long it will take me to rebuild?” After calming her down, we talked to her about how this is a fresh start, and that she doesn’t have to rebuild the same things. Instead, she can reimagine, building something completely new. This is exactly what she did. She redesigned and built entirely new structures, even better and more creative than before.

What does this have to do with anything? I feel like so much of the conversation about moving forward is focused on getting back to normal. It’s about finding ways to rebuild what we had, reinstating our old lives brick by brick. Instead, I wish we spend more time reimagining what life could be. Let’s be honest with ourselves. There were a lot of things that weren’t serving us in the world before COVID. If anything, this pandemic has exposed some of these flaws across all aspects of our life (personal, social, mental, emotional, spiritual, political, and work). Now that we see those shortcomings, we can do something about them. Similar to the story about Legos, we don’t have to rebuild brick by brick. We can reimagine our live instead. We can take inventory of our lives now and decide what we want to keep and what we want to leave behind. We can design a new life that is better for all of us as individuals and for all of us as a whole. We can also redesign the way we work to make it better for everyone.

The challenge: How will you reimagine your career and your life as things get back to “normal”?

Extra thoughts: As I’m reimagining work I’m noodling on some of the following topics: How can I continue to keep/restructure my time to practice self-care? How do I ensure I don’t lose some of my physical fitness routines as I go back to work? How do I reimagine what I expect from bosses, teammates, and the company as I go back? How do I reimagine and reinforce my boundaries? How do I rethink what success looks like at work and in life? How can I be purposeful about engineering new habits that will serve me positively instead of falling into old habits that might make me comfortable while not necessarily helping me? What relationships do I want to invest in and which ones do I want to let go of?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Lessons from Being a Dad Part 2 Legos and Recognition (2-17-16)

Last week was a story about recognizing progress. This week is a different recognition story. The other day the girls and I were playing with Legos while my wife was out of the house with some friends. Whenever Alice builds something she thinks is really cool we put it up on the island in our kitchen so she can show her mom later. When we show my wife, Alice gets so excited, and it gives us a chance as parents to encourage her for her creativity, imagination, and the stories she tells.

The picture is of Alice with some Lego creations. Notice that I didn’t say HER Lego creations. She built the tower thing on the left, but the other things you see are things that I built with Violet. Violet and I had just finished building “Dinosaur Truck Tower” and “Helicopter Friend” (Alice’s names for the things) when Alice rushed over and said, “Daddy, these are beautiful. Can I put them on the island to show mommy? She’ll be so proud of you and Violet.”

Alice wasn’t jealous. Alice wasn’t worried that if her mom saw our cool stuff that she’d think Alice’s creations weren’t great. Instead, she was so proud of the work her sister and I did that she wanted to share it with her mom.

Think about our work. We often talk about the need for reward and recognition. We often wait for a boss or someone higher up to notice us. Instead of waiting, why don’t we lift each other up to be seen? How often do you get so excited about the work of your peers that you make the effort to make sure the boss notices them? How do you take their work and put it on your “kitchen island” so everyone else can see what you think is beautiful?

The Challenge: Show someone a peer’s “Lego creation” this week. Show them the beautiful colors, the thought that went into building it. Show them that you are noticing them and you care enough about them that you want to share them and their success with the world.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry