Did you know a carpenter started LEGO?

Straight Up. If it was going to be a tradesperson, we’d at least think it would be a builder.

But no. It was created by Ole Kirk Kristiansen (a Danish carpenter) in 1932.

Even more amazing was Ole started by making high quality wooden toys, not plastic bricks.

Ole ran a competition in 1934 to name the company, offering a bottle of home-made wine as the prize. Settling on LEGO as a shortened version of the Danish word Leg godt, which means ‘play well’.

In 1947 Ole made a huge decision, which has fueled LEGO’s growth to this day. He bought Lego’s first ever plastic injection moulding machine, which cost twice the previous year’s profits.

It was an amazing decision, considering he was a carpenter by trade and went against what most people in the trade we’re telling him to do.

Ole’s sons then got involved to help grow the company, taking inspiration from samples of injection moulded toy bricks, one of which was by British toy maker Hilary Fisher Page.

By 1958 Ole and his sons had finally perfected the first LEGO brick and patented the system. The rest is history as they say, with revenues in 2019 close to £5 billion.

Ole’s family still own a 75% stake in the firm, which has now expanded into theme parks, hotels, and movies. It also has a 50% stake in theme park operator Merlin Entertainments, who own LEGOLAND and Alton Towers, amongst many others.

What can we learn?

Although Ole was a carpenter, he was able to see beyond his trade and realised LEGO would have much more success in plastic toy’s rather than wooden ones.

Yes, it was a huge decision (some would say a huge risk) by Ole to spend every penny they had on injection moulding equipment to transform the company’s focus. But he was proved correct.

Leaders must make critical decisions at different stages of an organisations life cycle, and Ole’s is a great example, as if he hadn’t bought this new equipment, it’s unlikely Lego would be here today.

It’s not on the same scale. But back in 2014 we had to make (what was for us) a huge decision to close our retail stores and transform the business into an office technology & supplies business.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s been very hard, and took every penny we had (and more) to achieve it. But just like Ole, if we hadn’t made this decision, we’d not be providing our signature Simple Honest Service today.

…hopefully, we’ll own the other 50% of Merlin Entertainments some day!