Author:David Robertson,Bill Breen
LEGO is one of the world's best-loved and most familiar brands, adored by generations of children. What is less well known, though, is how close this iconic company came to total collapse in 2003.
Brick by Brick is the compelling story of a Danish family-owned company that enjoyed decades of success before its inability to keep in step with a rapidly changing market brought it crashing to earth. It's also the story of an extraordinary recovery. As disaster stared them in the face, the management of LEGO embarked on an audacious and innovative plan to turn their fortunes around, and then painstakingly implemented it. Today, the company is riding high once again, and enjoying results that are the envy of their competitors.
Granted unprecedented access to every part of the LEGO Group, David Robertson not only charts each twist in the company's story but explains precisely what went wrong and how it was fixed. His clear-sighted analysis will prove invaluable to all those who want to understand how companies can not only ride the storm of change, but benefit from it.
The raw material he deals with is every bit as durable and gripping as Lego bricks. . .Robertson’s take on Lego’s success holds plenty of lessons for companies pondering how to remain innovative in a fast-changing world.
—— Financial TimesA nuanced and readable case study.
—— Wall Street JournalThis book will get you thinking.
—— Daily TelegraphCompelling and scalable.
—— EdgeStrong and original... It is impossible not to be impressed and a little daunted by so much energy and wisdom.
—— Irish IndependentWise words, succinctly put – the work of a master.
—— Peter Cook , HR ZoneStill full of insights into the ever-changing world of work... Challenging received opinion, as he has done for decades.
—— Peter Day , BBC World ServiceA fierce manifesto for radical political, corporate and social change.
—— The Financial TimesIn this book Handy encourages us to think differently about organisational structures. He presents engaging, cogent arguments about the organisations that we know today in sectors such as politics, education, business and how they will need to be very different in 20 years’ time.
—— Marketing WeekJeff Sutherland is the master of creating high-performing teams. The subtitle of this book understates Scrum’s impact. If you don’t get three times the results in one-third the time, you aren’t doing it right!
—— Scott Maxwell, Founder & Senior Managing Director, OpenView Venture PartnersJeff Sutherland used the common-sense but seldom-applied principles of the quality movement, user-centered design, and lean development to come up with a process that dramatically increases productivity while reducing employees’ frustrations with the typical corporate nonsense. This book is the best description I’ve seen of how this process can work across many industries. Senior leaders should not just read the book—they should do what Sutherland recommends.
—— Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor, Stanford Business School and c-author of The Knowing-Doing GapGroundbreaking…Will upend people’s assumptions about how productive they can actually be…Here Jeff Sutherland discloses to the non-tech world the elegantly simple process that programmers and Web developers have been using since he invented Scrum, showing how a small, empowered, and dedicated team can deliver significantly higher quality work at a faster pace through introspection, iteration, and adaptation.
—— Michael Mangi, Senior V.P. of Interactive Technology, Social@OgilvyThis book will change the way you do everything. Even better, it will help you feel good in the process. Just read it, and get more done.
—— Arnold V. Strong, CEO of BrightNeighbor.com, and Colonel, US Army ReserveThis deceptively simple system is the most powerful way I've seen to improve the effectiveness of any team. I started using it with my business and family halfway through reading the book.
—— Leo Babauta, creator of Zen HabitsA rip-roaring read.
—— People ManagementEvery manager should read it.
—— Scottish Business InsiderMakes you rethink the fundamentals of successful management.
—— Flight TimeWhether you’re building schools in a third world country, teaching a classroom full of elementary students, or building websites, Scrum is highly effective because it matches many of the instincts that drive human nature; as Sutherland put it in his book, “Happiness is not complacent. It is a process, not a result.”
—— SpeckyboyIf there was a Nobel Prize for management, and if there was any justice in the world, I believe that the prize would be awarded, among others, to Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber and Mike Cohn for their contributions to the invention of Scrum.
—— Forbes magazine