LEGO® Voices Blog

While growing up, we implicitly learn, via norms and educational systems, that playing is unnecessary, silly and something you only do in certain situations, as a child or with your own children. More or less what the principal said to me when I was 16 years old. I am not stating that we should all start to dress up (even though I love it) or roleplaying, to learn new skills. But as adults, it is still quite important to play. Play is a catalyst for skill development which makes it easier to learn new things that are very needed for all of us in a rapidly changing world. On top of that, it is also very energizing to learn new things.

I am so fortunate to work here, where the values are not just old wallpaper, and I get to use them every day. Our vision – to be a global force for establishing and innovating Learning through Play – is both inspiring and action-orientated. We need to be(come) a playful organization ourselves to be true to our vision. And with my job, I sort of see it as my obligation to create one of the paths to always live up to the vision, because I have this licence to Play. In fact, we all have a licence to Play at the LEGO Group.

That’s also why we have, every year, the so-called LEGO® Play Day as one of the Play initiatives to engage ourselves, more than 18,000 employees globally, for a full day, in Learning through Play activities. This year, because of COVID-19, we could not have a physical Play Day – but we decided to proceed anyway.

As we have been separated as colleagues for months, and will be for a while, we needed to create a space, to make us all feel a part of our global force, and what better way to do that than playing together. So, the past few weeks we have joined efforts with our colleagues around the globe to experiment, bounce ideas, being creative and using our imagination and problem-solving skills, to scope and develop a new Play initiative, that we call the Virtual Play Week.

I have no idea how it will turn out as we have never tried it before, but one thing is for sure: we have done our best to make it engaging and diverse. There is no doubt that we will learn a lot from the activities, the platform and the audience. I am very proud, humbled and energized that I have a job where I can use all my skills and personality to do what I live for, laughter, love and positive energy. Let's play.