Give Them DUPLOs, Not LEGOs
Sunday afternoon in my daughter’s room. She is three kneeling in front of a DUPLO tower almost as tall as her.
Wobbling, eyes locked, and building something as tall as her. She was building this tower over and over full of laughter and squeals of joy.
If I had handed her LEGOs this Sunday afternoon she would have been full of frustration and tears.
Not because she isn’t capable. Because the pieces are too small, the instructions too fine. The gap between vision and execution is too wide.
The craving to build is hardwired in all of us. My kids have it. Your kids have it. Your team has it too.
Our teams come to work in our family business hoping to find the blocks big enough to grip.
Here is the question every leader answers every single day, whether they know it or not:
Am I handing my team DUPLOs or LEGOs?
DUPLOs are clarity. LEGOs are complexity.
DUPLOs are vision and values a new hire can repeat to their spouse at dinner. LEGOs are a 14-page strategic plan no one will open until the next year to redo it.
DUPLOs are the reason your front-line foremen and your CFO describe the company the same way. LEGOs are the reason they don't.
DUPLOs are much harder to come by. Clarity is hard. Steve Jobs said it this way: "Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But once you get there, you can move mountains."
This is the great unclaimed advantage of family business. Public companies rewrite their language every three years with the next CEO. We don't. We get to compound clarity across decades. We get to keep pounding the compound of the most original questions: the why, the how, the where.
We get to simplify and amplify until our grandchildren might know it by heart.
We've been pounding on our DUPLOs at Century for years. Still refining. Still compounding.
Here's where we are as we strive to put out DUPLOs to pick up:
MISSION: How are we showing up to serve the marketplace?
Helping build safer communities
VISION: Where are you going? How will you know you’ve made it?
Building leaders who strengthen families and communities
VALUES: How are you building? What behaviors are acceptable?
Humble - No ego.
Hungry - Ever forward.
Together - Many Hands. Light work.
None of it was quick. None of it is finished.
People want to work at a business with depth. Depth leads to a richer life. Real, generational, depth is built with DUPLOs, not LEGOs.
This week, pick one sentence. Your mission. A value. A quarterly priority. (often called a “ROCK”) Read it out loud and ask: Could my newest hire repeat this to their spouse over dinner tonight?
If the answer is no, you're handing them LEGOs.
Make it simpler. Your team is waiting to build.
Onward,
Matt