Dangers of "The Lego Mindset"

It's the holiday season, and, of course, I've had to walk through some toy shops lately. So, this took me back to one of my favorites toys, Lego.

Who didn't love to play with Lego as a kid? It was a simple twist on building blocks, but so much better.

One of the best attributes of Lego was the interchangeability - each piece was immediately usable in any alternative circumstance. It took a small piece of plastic and gave it a million possibilities. Brilliant!

That same interchangeability, however, doesn't translate to other areas of life. In work, especially, falling into what I call a "Lego Mindset" is especially dangerous. Here are some examples...

The "Lego People Mindset"

As all teams eventually do, you lose a team member to another opportunity. Eventually, each team goes through a tough time transitioning to another person, the replacement. Rhythm is thrown off. The new person needs to be trained and acculturated to the new office and workflow. The previously established intimacy needs to be rebuilt or find a new equilibrium.

Depending on the speed of the transition, it is likely to find people complaining about the "new guy". He's got habits they're not used to. He's not accustomed to the workflow and is either responding to it too slowly or too quickly. Intimacy hasn't yet been established, and, by extension, neither has trust, so any questionable behavior is greeted with suspicion.

What's at work here is a combination of grief and the "Lego People Mindset"; grief over the loss of the previous teammate, and frustration over the new person's inability to immediately match everyone else's stride.

Think of a team of horses pulling a wagon. Adding in a new horse is disruptive. The new horse doesn't share the rhythm the other horses have from years of working in tandem. This new horse starts to drag on the team, and not through any fault of its own.

So it is with people. The frustration of developing a new stride and collective rhythm is felt pretty quickly.

What's needed here is understanding that people are not like Lego - they can't be plucked out of one construction, placed into another, and function at the same level right away. New situations present learning curves. As school should have taught us, we all learn at different speeds and in different ways. Some of us pick up a rhythm right away, others need to run with the pack several times before the pace internalizes.

No, the other guy isn't a screw-up. No, he's not slow, either. No, he's not busy building some corporate conspiracy. He's just not used to the way you do business. He doesn't have years of experience helping him instinctively make the next right move.

Also, he's busy trying to undo what habits he does have from previous places of employment. These changes in behavior don't take hold overnight. Give him a chance.

Now, in some cases, yes, the new guy is all of the negatives previously described. And in those cases, he should be let go. But don't jump to these conclusions faster than you should. I hate six month probationary periods for this reason. Not that probationary periods are bad, but they have a tendency to make managers hasty about switching people out. A manager who lacks confidence in her hiring decisions could be looking for an excuse to undo the decision - kind of like buyer's remorse.

The other tough part of the "Lego People Mindset" is how easy it is to fall into. I've seen previous victims of the "Lego People Mindset" turn around and impose the Mindset on others. That's unfortunate because I think that people who've overcome the "Lego People Mindset" can be the best tacklers of it. Nothing cuts through the nonsense more effectively than saying, "Hey, when I got here, you all thought the same of me... Give him a chance. He'll come around. I sure did."

The Lego Idea Mindset

I've written before about sampling in creative work. Sampling's an integral part of what we do. Wholesale re-creation, however, is another thing altogether. Apart from the moral questions it raises (i.e., "Isn't that a form of thievery?"), there's the danger of the "Lego Idea". Ideas that work in one situation are not immediately transferable to another. In our lingo, you can't always use a Chicago spot in L.A. and get the same results.

Ideas are funny things. Some are universal. Some only work in the minds of a select few.

So it is with promos. There are some ideas that translate. Truth be told, one hard news promo usually looks like all the others. Still, even then, you need to customize. Philly's version of hard news is different from San Diego's.

On a side note, this is why the "hubbing" trend worries me. From a pure business standpoint (dollars and cents), hubbing's a no-brainer. This attempt to contain costs, however, unintentionally hamstrings the creative process. Fewer artists / writers / producers working in full collaboration on singular products creates the opportunity for mish-mosh. We're all slowly starting look alike, sound alike, feel alike. Hubbing is exacerbating the problem. I don't blame the people working at hubs. In a create-on-demand environment, it is very easy to slip into a cookie-cutter mode, often without noticing it. But that's another article altogether. The point here is that this business practice not only invites a "Lego Mindset", it institutionalizes it. That's dangerous for creativity and works contrary to brand-building.

This doesn't just apply to product / content. This applies to how you run your office, too. I can't remember who, but a consultant I know once told me that the most dangerous time for any office is when the key individual (a CEO, a V.P., a department head) is at a conference. The rank and file should pray when the key individual leaves that an idea doesn't come back with that key individual. (And, by an idea here, I mean one of those things that takes over the key individual's head, making them want to remake the business in this idea's image - and yes, I do mean those religious overtones for effect.) These grand ideas don't usually translate properly, and, in the interim, only serve to disrupt the business.

Ideas are good. Ideas, however, need to be appreciated with a grain of salt. There's got to be some heavy consideration of applicability to the situation in question. Beware of "Lego Ideas".

In conclusion...

Creative work is unique. So, too, is the group of people who engage in it for pay. Each of us has a different perspective, a singular talent, an unmatched viewpoint.

We also have our own rhythms. Some of us just "crank", enjoying a steady level of output. Some of us "simmer", taking our time to put out our product. Most of us waver between the extremes - enjoying the occasional fertile period, settling into a manageable pace most of the time.

That rhythm is easily disrupted when we are transferred to new environs, or when our own environs change. Be careful not to let the pain and discomfort of the disruption lead you to hasty judgments about your teams. Let's be honest, teams form to eventually disband or change membership. Learning to apply patience and avoid the "Lego Mindset" is going to come in handy, and could ultimately be an important step in developing your teams of the future.