IMD Annual Report 2019

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IMD ANNUAL REPORT 2019

IMPACT STORY: LEGO

“We needed outside inspiration - a very strong facilitator of the process, both facilitating the external inspiration that is relevant to us, but also facilitating a development journey, a co-creation journey, of this new leadership initiative in a very new, progressive way.”

To help the LEGO Group achieve its goals, IMD undertook to support by:

Building a new era of leadership at LEGO Group

• Facilitating and co-creating the process and solutions, with three workshops in Lausanne • Providingguidanceand inspiration-challenging thinking with different ideas for leadership • Coaching and equipping each working group member to fulfil his or her potential throughout the process The multinational company brought together a 12-strong, diverse working group to propel the exploration forward with IMD, featuring individuals from vice-president to manager level, and drawing on a range of cultures and ages.

IMD helped the LEGO Group co-create a groundbreaking model for inspiring and engaging its people When LEGO Group wanted to redefine its concept of leadership and development, it turned to IMD to co-create a learning journey that would completely transform the famous Danish toy manufacturer’s approach. The brick pioneer wanted to depart from a leadership system that had been dominated by frameworks and fairly prescriptive guides and to move towards an approach that was much more current and progressive, and would inspire and engage its entire workforce at all levels of the company through shared responsibility and safe, open engagement. After some initial investigation, the LEGOGroup realized it also needed to go beyond the “off-the-shelf” advice of a consultancy. “We wanted to take a new and progressive approach to defining leadership. Not the traditional ‘top down’, but a process where we engaged the organization in creating the leadership it needed to perform,” said Michael Kehlet, the LEGO Group Vice-President for People, Operations & Development.