/ Thought Sparks
HOW LEGO USED AGILE PRINCIPLES TO ACCELERATE INNOVATION
Rita McGrath
Agile methods – in which work is done in parallel by cross functionally staffed teams has been the subject of a lot of hype. How refreshing, then, to discover examples of firms making it work in real life. One of the protagonists of the Lego story, Lars Roost, will be partnering with me in person at the World Agility Forum September 23-24.
The LEGO Group dug itself out of a neardeath experience in 2003 by, among many other things, creating an Enterprise Platform which created a culture of continuous improvement in all its key management processes. Digitization was a huge part of this transformation, which took the better part of a decade and was widely credited with helping the company’s transformation. An example of how it used digital technologies in a clever way was its “Legos Ideas” initiative which allowed fans to submit ideas for new products, shortening the product development time and effectively pre-testing concepts for market acceptance.
Leaving bureaucracy behind at LEGO
Tasks originate with groups of program managers and product managers who outline the high-level outcomes the organization would like to achieve, roughly in what timeframe, to meet the company’s strategic portfolio objectives. This work is done before the planning cycles commence, consistent with our discussion of creating a context, above. This creates what is called a ‘project backlog.’
How the work gets done
An example of what this looked like in the digital solutions group might be helpful to understand how the work changed. As Lars Roost (a program manager within LEGO) and Henrik Krisberg explain, work was restructured to reflect three levels of activity.
Where does management get involved?
All of this is now followed by the management review of the whole plan, in which more senior leaders look at the outputs from the day and engage in a discussion of tradeoffs and risks. Conclusions such as “we don’t have enough resources to do both A and B within this next planning cycle” are discussed in a facilitated conversation. The managers are also required to go through the risk boards, as the only risks left are ones the teams can’t resolve themselves. The goal is to meet the goal of ROAM the risk is Resolved, Owned, Accepted or Mitigated.
The innovations created through LEGO’s process have been so successful that the company has been called “The Apple of Toys” and consistently landed on any number of most innovative company lists.
Permissionless innovations
We’re launching our fall cohort of learners for our Planning / Creating Customer Insight program. In just 8 weeks, you can learn the fundamentals of creating product-market fit, that all-important starting point for value-creating innovation. There are 6 mini-courses included, plus 6 live office hour sessions with me.
Meanwhile, at Valize
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