Leadership Lesson from LEGO®: Pivoting to What (Else) Is Possible
It’s Sunday! Then again, Monday is like Sunday these days, as do all the days in my week. My brother posted a photo of two sets of legos without the boxes, with the caption, ‘Guess the build’. Being a Star Trek fan, my immediate thought was Starship Enterprise without batting an eyelash. Of course I do not know what it was that he was planning to build and neither have I seen the box. In short, I did not and still do not know the answer (and he is not telling either!)
I remember one of Robin Sharma’s famous quotes, “Nothing fails like success.”
1. Shifting Priorities. Aligning with something unknown is impossible. When our plans get jettisoned, the natural question to ask is, ‘What now?’ Our team has a laundry list of ideas sitting in the back burner. That is what we are working on now. We have time to shift our efforts on projects we tagged as ‘Nice To Do’. When you are left with doing nothing and doing something, choose doing something nice. Amazing how that shifts perspectives and activates positive thoughts to help you through another day.
2. Starting Over. We are no stranger to changes, cancellations and pauses. This happens all the time in business. We have learned that when circumstances rain on our parade, there is always a choice to run for cover in order to stay dry; but ironically, the worst thing could be the best thing too. When we cannot help but get soaked, we just agree to dance.
3. Building Something New. I have to say, I like the idea of building something new in the mean time and see what comes out of this. What if we threw away the box and got creative? What if we put our collective skills to work? What if we deliberately embraced the unknown?
Life is a lot like boxes of legos. When you lose pieces, the final product is not what it is supposed to be. But if we take stock of our tools and gather loose pieces and strip old boxes for parts and use those to build something unplanned while enjoying the process of creating something different, that just might be the start of something bigger and better.
When we emerge from these trying times and finally take a step back to appreciate our work, that shows we have found a way to move forward.