LEGO: The Company Growth Vis-À-Vis The Values Of A Family Business

Ole Kirk's worldview was strongly marked by the Christian faith. This is a common trait that could be found in most of the families living in the region that shared strong values. Therefore, Christian charity was a fundamental feature that emerged both in Ole kirk and his son when it came to decisions on the daily relationship with employees. Giving expression to these positions, in 1962 Godtfred appointed as Director of Personnel Gustav Adolf Højlund a pastor from the church of Denmark. Despite the unusual choice he was hired because Godtfred believed that he possessed the human qualities that every director of personnel should have. Equally important was the management style that Godtfred developed in the 1960s, creating a special working culture. He was the first person to be oriented towards action and intuition, so he did not present himself as a traditional authoritarian leader, imposing a strong hierarchy; instead, Godtfred believed that people should be able to be independent. At the time his approach was so bizarre that many new managers had difficulties to understand what to do and more than one resigned.

Gotfred's management style was based on asking questions, listen and propose ideas and then wait for the person in question to find out for themselves what should be done, how and when. One of his typical phrase was: “Do the right thing at the right time and do it 100 percent, the reward will come from you”. If something went wrong, Godtfred would normally take it with philosophy, saying that you had tried and learned something and you were better prepared to do it right the next time.

Trust, sharing and delegation of responsibilities were all typical traits of Godtfred's management, and they proved to be highly motivating on managers who were able to interpret the code of this work culture. Helge Torpe, the marketing director used to say: “When you have a leader of that kind, you want to conquer the whole world and that's what we've done”. Godtfred himself explained his management style by saying that it is essential to show one hundred percent confidence if you want to establish mutual respect; you listen to each other and so that everyone can compare to see if you are making the right or better choice. He presented his philosophy in a speech 1960 during a sale conference, he addressed to entrepreneurs:

1. Find the right idea, and create the right business concept.
2. Be satisfied, but never entirely, because that will continue to create.
3. The idea needs to be deepened and even expanded, so as to distance the competition
4. Finding the right employees and demonstrating 100 percent confidence in them, because this triggers a positive energy.
5. The employees who work seriously are not afraid to make mistakes: they learn from mistakes.
6. Never set out to be the biggest, but make sure you're the best.
7. The most important task of a manager is product development.
8. Make sure you are self-financing, and be careful of the size craze.
9. The entrepreneur has never finished; otherwise he is finished.

Godtfred’s philosophy reflects a constant drive for improvement. He explained it this way: the best for us is just enough. This means that we must always strive to produce even better bricks and that we must link the best engineers and the best workforce on the market to our business.

This attention to quality is expressed in the fact that in 1963 the bricks produced today maintain the shape and colour as if they were new, and can be assembled with those that are produced nowadays.

Approximately twenty-seven percent of children who play with bricks inherited from their parents and it has been shown that parents who pass on the LEGO to their child when they were children buy more new packaging than other families.

Another consequence of the values on which lego is based was Godtfred's insistence on doing everything possible himself from development to production to marketing and sales. For example, he planned carefully the chain of sales of LEGO products, according to him wholesalers dealing with thousands of other toys would not be motivated enough to explain in details the reasons on which the LEGO was based or would not have the time to do so. Thus the company built up its own sellers network, which had no experience in the toy industry since Godtfred considered its product to be something more, a tool for development and learning and therefore could not be marketed using words and concepts typical of the toy industry. Following the same principle, Godtfred refused to buy other companies producing games. He was of the opinion that the only way to create a strong position on the market and in the minds of consumers was to constantly focus on the basic principle and its possibilities. This self-reliant policy was also reflected in the financing, in the 1960s, when sales became a huge success, Godtfred turned LEGO into a self-financing company independent of banks. The money was deposited with a finance company that would later become Kirkbi, that would later be named LEGO Bank.