#026 Jesper Ambrosius, Director of Environmental Product Innovation at the LEGO Group - Learning by Watching & Playful Mindsets
My guest today is Jesper Ambrosius of LEGO. The career journey that brought him there is fascinating! He graduated with a double-Bachelor's in Media Science and Economics and then got a Master’s in Economics from Aarhus and Sydney University. Throughout his career, he has been working within primarily leadership and strategy – both with his own teams and as a strategy partner for several executives. He started out as a management trainee in the global telco company Telenor where he later took on two different leadership positions. In 2015, he joined The LEGO Group, (every kid’s dream, right?!) working on strategic initiatives with key partners including LEGO’s Chief Marketing Officer and the Chief People Officer. Later, he helped establish LEGO Workplace Experience, which played a crucial role in LEGO during COVID-19, and he now heads up Environmental Product Innovation. Jesper lives in Aarhus, Denmark, with his wife Signe and their three children aged 3, 6, and 8 (who all happen to love their father’s job at The LEGO Group!) This conversation has many highlights: We talked about Jesper’s first ever jobs where he proves the importance of being open to opportunities that might change your direction or path. He talks about how all the different jobs and working with all kinds of people at the start of his career broadened his perspective. He then answers your burning question of what it’s like to work at LEGO and the strategies he's applied to design and build exciting, collaborative and creative workplace experiences, improving talent attraction and employee retention globally. Jesper also discusses the pivots they’ve had to make throughout the pandemic, and how they’re adapting their strategies to a new hybrid model. Ambrosius walks us through how he’s cultivating a culture within his team and the challenges of doing this remotely. Stay tuned to the end where Jesper discusses the ‘’playful mindset’’ and how he hopes this will become more prevalent throughout the LEGO group. Just writing this intro got me excited to listen to this conversation again! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ann-hiatt/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ann-hiatt/support