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LEGO built too much complexity: This is how we got back on track
Niels B. Christiansen tells Jean-François Manzoni how he streamlined the leadership and targeted adult customers to re-energize the toy giant. ...
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LEGO CEO Niels B. Christiansen tells Jean-François Manzoni how he streamlined the leadership and targeted adult customers to re-energize the toy giant.
Few companies inspire the cross-generational affection that LEGO does. From the plastic brick first produced in Billund in the 1950s, the LEGO Group has grown into the world’s largest toy company, with revenues exceeding €11bn ($12.8bn) and around 34,000 employees worldwide. It is one of the most remarkable brand stories in modern business.
Yet that story has not been one of uninterrupted success. In the early 2000s, LEGO faced serious challenges that forced a fundamental rethink. The discipline and clarity that emerged continue to shape how the company operates today.
When Niels B Christiansen took over as CEO in 2017, he stepped into a company that had regained momentum but was showing signs of strain. “The language we used was that the company had stalled,” he recalled. “After a period of growing, it had become very complex and quite slow.”
His early focus was not on bold vision, but on regaining control. “Instead of being super visionary, it was much more down to how do we get control of the basics? How do we figure out what really matters and what doesn’t matter, and how do we simplify?”
Early actions were deliberately practical and designed to create momentum and bring oxygen back into the room. “I thought it was important to do less talking and more showing,” he said.
Instead of being super visionary, it was much more down to how do we get control of the basics? How do we figure out what really matters, and how do we
simplify?
Restarting the flywheel
An important component of Christiansen’s initial diagnosis was his view that product, marketing, and channels should work in sync. “It sounds pretty basic,” he said, “but that flywheel had stopped.” Fixing it required working on different fronts and time horizons. “You can’t transform your product portfolio overnight, nor can you redesign your channels overnight,” he observed. “That takes time. But you can move pretty quickly on how you activate and spend your marketing.”
After hearing from country leaders that decision-making was too slow, for example, he introduced discretionary “booster funds” for key markets – funds local teams could deploy without prior approval. “It worked fantastically … that decision power suddenly sat there [with the teams]”, which resulted in a dual benefit: revenue growth and growing confidence in the new direction.
Meanwhile, LEGO invested in physical retail – a bold move at the time, as many others were pulling back. It also started growing its product portfolio again. This latter decision was tricky. There was no guarantee that the new products would be successful, and they would introduce more supply chain complexity.
Christiansen and his team worked hard at tackling these challenges. To improve “hit rate”, the product development process was redesigned to become more consumer-centric and data-driven. To manage supply chain complexity, LEGO invested in new technology and capacity.
Large organizations will just grow more and more complex until they eventually have poor results.
Expanding the audience
Growing the portfolio to hit more passion points and interests enlarged the audience, including women, many of whom became passionate builders through product lines such as the LEGO Botanical Collection. A larger, more diverse cultural offering, in turn, helped extend its reach, leading to partnerships with organizations such as Formula 1 and FIFA.
This reflected a disciplined approach to decision-making. In early product reviews, Christiansen was clear about the limits of instinct. “It’s a lucky punch if you’re the best one to make decisions,” he said. Instead, LEGO invested more systematically in testing, segmentation, and data.
It also required a more nuanced definition of failure. “You cannot be as creative as we are if you don’t [accept failure],” he said. What matters is what follows. “It’s quite important to figure out why we failed, so we can avoid making the same mistake.”
If growth was one priority, then simplicity was the other. For Christiansen, the two were inseparable. “Large organizations will just grow more and more complex until they eventually have poor results.”
One of his earliest moves was to reshape the leadership structure. The corporate management team was reduced from around 30 to 10, and eventually to the seven-member team today, enabling more focused discussion and faster decision-making. But structural change was only part of the solution. The deeper challenge was cultural: resisting the constant drift toward more meetings, more layers, and more coordination.
Christiansen’s response was deliberately continuous rather than episodic. “I don’t believe much in every seven or 10 years doing a big clean-up,” he said. “It’s much better if you can keep making small organizational changes almost all the time.”
The methods were straightforward. Meetings were shorter and fewer, ending as soon as the agenda was completed. Productivity targets were set up front and embedded into budgets. “You stop, and then you find a way,” he said.
Reflecting on why this “Partner for Productivity” program became so successful and, importantly, did not result in cost-reduction decisions that could undermine growth, Christiansen said he made it very clear early on that it was not about short-term profit maximization. Instead, the goal was to focus on creating financial and non-financial resources that could be redirected toward innovation and growth.
Leading for the long term
Alongside execution, Christiansen had to navigate two long-term challenges: sustainability and digitalization. The sustainability question is particularly complex. LEGO’s core product is made of plastic, creating an inherent tension with its mission. “Of course, you want to protect the planet that kids will live on,” he said.
The company initially pursued a single, fully bio-based material. That solution proved elusive. Instead, LEGO has made steady progress through a combination of approaches, including a mass balance system. By 2025, over half of the material used in its bricks was non-fossil-based.
There has been real progress over the past few years, even if future advances are likely to come in smaller steps as the company nears what is technically feasible, said Christiansen. At this point, consumers are not willing to pay more for the product, he noted. “We do it because of the non-commercial reasons.” Family ownership, he added, made that possible.
Digital presented a different challenge. As children spend more time on screens, LEGO’s competition is evolving. “We’re probably competing more with the entertainment industry than with the toy industry,” he said.
His approach was pragmatic. Digital was not an enemy, but neither was it the end goal. “You go to the game, but maybe you also go and physically play,” he said. “We would much rather have our customers super excited about the LEGO brand than monetize too hard.”
Making commitments credible
Underpinning Christiansen’s approach is a clear philosophy of change. In many organizations, employees often wait to see whether an initiative will truly take hold. His goal was to discourage this “wait-and-see” attitude by creating a sense of “inevitability” – the belief that, if management is launching an initiative, there’s no doubt that they will see it through – so it’s better to get on board immediately.
Of course, said Christiansen, “if you try to load the organization with more than it can carry, you will lose it. So, choose your commitments carefully, make them clear, and then deliver.”
Christiansen also feels strongly about the need to role model key aspects of leadership, including always showing up on time and being prepared – practices that he believes are more likely to cascade through the organization through his example than through admonishments.
In the same vein, he ensures his agenda is focused on priorities and value-adding activities. It includes a few unallocated slots, so he can deal quickly with urgent matters that never fail to appear. “As a CEO”, he said, “you cannot be driven by your agenda; you must drive your agenda.”
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