No Orders—Figure It Out Yourself

“Godtfred himself was action-oriented and intuitive. He expected others to be the same. Therefore, he did not appear as the traditional authoritarian leader who gave orders on what people should do. That was otherwise the management tradition of the time. The boss orders, the next in the hierarchy executes. Just like in the army. Godtfred insisted that people should and could do things themselves.”

“According to Helge Torpe, who joined LEGO in 1958 as an executive assistant, Godtfred Kirk was the first boss he had who did not give an order. At that time, it was such an unfamiliar approach to management that many new LEGO leaders had difficulty figuring out what to do, and many left LEGO again for the same reason.”