In this episode, Ed Lewin and Claire Thwaites of the LEGO® Group explain how their Government and Public Affairs team’s purpose led them to campaign for what became the United Nations International Day of Play, celebrated every June 11. Spread across China, Singapore, the US, Mexico and Europe, and unable to meet during the pandemic, the team discovered their individual purposes and then their team purpose with Core Leadership Institute: “purveyors of the magic, calming seas and shaping play-filled futures.” They describe how a broad coalition, real resourcing and a few brave conversations helped make it happen.

Ed Lewin is Vice President, Government & Public Affairs at the LEGO® Group.

Claire Thwaites is the former Senior Director, Government and Public Affairs at the LEGO® Group.

Nick Craig is President & Founder of Core Leadership Institute, author of Leading from Purpose (Hachette Books, 2018) and co-author with Scott Snook of the Harvard Business Review article “From Purpose to Impact” (2014).

About Nick →

00:05

What are Ed Lewin’s and Claire Thwaites’s purposes?

Nick Craig00:05

Hi everyone, this is Nick Craig. This is another Purpose to Impact® podcast. I have two special guests from the LEGO® Group today. Ed Lewin is the Vice President of Global Government and Public Affairs, and I’ve been working with him on this journey for some time. He’s joined today by Claire Thwaites, who is a Senior Director for Government and Public Affairs at the LEGO® Group. So I want to welcome both of you. Welcome, Ed. How are you?

Ed Lewin00:41

I’m really well, Nick. Thanks very much. I’m looking forward to this conversation.

Nick Craig00:43

Great. And Claire, how are things today for you?

Claire Thwaites00:47

Really good, Nick. Lovely to be talking with you again.

Nick Craig00:51

So we’ve been on a powerful journey together. To give context, this podcast is an expression of, and an outcome of, the work that we’ve done together. We’re going to get to talk about that today, and everybody who is listening is going to get to participate as well. So it’s a special experience, and we’re going to be inviting you to help us create how purpose comes alive when we really do something cool. The journey we’ve been on together has spanned about three or four years. So what I’d love to do is to have each of you share your purpose, and then give us some sense of the journey that we’ve been on. So Ed, what’s your purpose?

Ed Lewin01:45

My purpose is: buckle up. I’ll play the money beat. You play your symphony.

Nick Craig01:52

Oh, what does that mean, my friend?

Ed Lewin01:55

Well, it means a few things. Buckle up is a reference to anticipation and excitement, that we’re about to go on a journey and it’s going to be fast. But also the safety and security that I like to provide people in my team. It dates back to very early memories of mine, being at home, riding around the kitchen on a plastic toy truck, trying to go as fast as I could. Finding that very exhilarating, but at the same time, I remember feeling very safe with my mum around as well. When we did our crucible stories through your process, that memory was very clear to me.

“I’ll play the money beat” is a reference to my love of drumming, which is a newly acquired love, relatively, about four years. For me, the drummer in a band needs to hold the band together. It’s that constant consistency of beat that allows people to do great things and to play their symphony, which is the last part of my purpose. I love seeing people flourish on the stage, reveal their talent, and giving them that opportunity to do so.

Nick Craig03:15

Beautiful. Claire, would you be willing to share with us your purpose?

Claire Thwaites03:19

Absolutely, Nick. Thank you. Mine is to be a cheerleader in the room where it happens.

If I explain that a little bit more, the cheerleader part: I’ve been so lucky to have so many cheerleaders in my life, family for the most part, but also awesome friends and colleagues. I’ve been surrounded by cheerleaders who have given me a great career, great advice, wise counsel around me. I hope I can be the cheerleader for other people as well. I hope I have been. I hope I am. I hope I continue to be. So the cheerleading piece is really important to me.

To be in the room where it happens: I’ve stolen that from my favourite musical, Hamilton. But it’s also so political, because as a government affairs professional, you absolutely want to be in the room where it happens. You want the company that you are representing to be there, having the right conversations at the right tables. So professionally, that’s important. I also want to be in some great fun rooms where it’s happening, whether it’s with a glass of wine, with friends. The room where it happens, I get FOMO. I just want to be there.

04:40

How did a global team discover its purpose virtually?

Nick Craig04:40

I love that. I love that. If we recall when we started the journey, Claire, you were the one who started to pull a lot of these things together and started us on this journey. So Claire, would you like to start on what we’re going to be talking about today?

Claire Thwaites04:54

For sure. I was just thinking, it was 2021 when we first got together. That first year, as a fairly new, evolving, emerging team in government and public affairs at the LEGO® Group, we wanted to understand our individual purpose. So with you and the team, Nick, we worked on that for three days. And interestingly, if anyone looks back to 2021, it was mid-pandemic. We were in this workshop virtually with you for three days, across time zones and continents, because we had colleagues from China, Singapore, the US, Mexico, and colleagues in Europe as well. We were all wanting some team camaraderie. We were getting to know each other, because we had a lot of new recruits. So that first year, coming together to express our individual purpose, was really, really important.

We loved it. We came back for more the following year, to look at the purpose for the team. We were emerging from the pandemic then, in 2022. And it was really important again, because we were an emerging team. We wanted impact in the outside world. We wanted impact in the LEGO® Group. So how could we create a purpose, coalesce around a mission, around a statement, and do something that only government and public affairs could do, where we really could make a dent in the world? And that’s where we came up with, after another three-day workshop, virtually again because we couldn’t all travel, to be “the purveyors of the magic, calming seas and shaping play-filled futures.”

Nick Craig06:51

Okay. And I’d love, Ed, for you to now blend in your journey as well, as the cheerleader is doing a wonderful job of living her purpose in this moment. What was your journey relative to this, and where did we get to at that initial phase?

Ed Lewin07:12

Yeah, I joined the LEGO® Group in January 2020, and I was so excited to be joining an amazing company with a vision and a mission that is so meaningful. I arrived in January, and as Claire said, in March and April 2020 the world completely changed. I had barely met anyone on the team. That was a very prolonged period of time where I couldn’t do, as a team leader, what I wanted to do. So we were really searching for that construct, and that’s where your work around purpose really came in.

Claire’s talked you through the individual purpose and then the team purpose. But I think the team purpose was so critical, because part of what I want to achieve in my career at any one point is to unite people. To get the team thinking: how can we move forward together, and how can we each individually play our role to a greater good?

The team purpose came together around “purveyors of the magic,” being the magic of the LEGO® brand. “Calming seas” in a very uncertain world, which we were particularly in then, and frankly it hasn’t really calmed down since COVID. Meaning we interpret that world for this business. We help them cut through what might be alarming headlines, see the reality of the situation and interpret what’s happening out there. And “shaping play-filled futures,” ultimately delivering work for the LEGO® Group that is in line with our vision to be a global force for learning through play.

So from the creation of that team purpose statement, we then, along with your team, helped define a project that was absolutely central to and meaningful for our team purpose, and a project that only government and public affairs at the LEGO® Group could carry out. And that’s where we get to what I think is the central subject of this podcast: our campaign for an internationally recognized day of play.

09:32

What holds a scattered global team together?

Nick Craig09:32

Oh my goodness, you already put that on the table. Okay, that’s really funny. So yes, we are right there, but I want to take a step back for those listening, because they’re going to need a little bit of help to fill in some of the gaps, so they can get a sense of how we got there. Then we’ll give much more time to this UN day for play.

The interesting challenge that we have in many of the organizations we work in is that we have a global team, and everybody’s got their local adventures. You could think of government and public affairs in China versus the US versus London versus somewhere in Eastern Europe, or the Middle East. It’s going to look and feel very, very different. One of the invitations we had was that when everybody discovered their individual purpose, there was this hunger for saying: what is our identity as a group that holds us together? Who are we, outside of being professionals who do what we do? And the journey we went on with the two of you, how many in total were there? It was about 25 to 30 individuals globally.

Ed Lewin10:46

I think we were about 25 then. Yeah.

Nick Craig10:48

Yeah. It was to go virtually on a journey. I hadn’t done the group purpose work virtually before, but we did. What we were really looking for was the unique gift of this group. How did it show up? What are the stories? As we looked at the stories and examples, and began to get a sense of what was more than just the hygiene factor of doing a good job, we began to identify a set of attributes. Some of the attributes were authenticity and soul, storytelling, connecting, provocateurs, which I always loved. You don’t think of government and public affairs as provocateurs, but you definitely had a number of examples of that. Trusted counselor. Kickstarter.

So when we looked at all that, the group started to fashion: what’s the title to the movie? Because what everybody got to share was all the stories that made up a beautiful movie. Purpose, for me, is the movie, not the story. It’s the moment where you show up as the hero, as opposed to simply what the title to the movie is. And the title that we ended up identifying was “purveyors of the magic, calming the seas and shaping play-filled futures.” It was amazing to have that come together virtually, with everybody all over the world.

So the interesting challenge in the invitation that purpose brings is this. Having a purpose is nice, and it feels good. But when you leave and go back to work, the question is: what are you going to do with this darn thing? My sense was that your invitation and opportunity was to identify something that everybody across the whole organization could do, and that no one else in the world could do. Because purpose is about the unique gift that you bring that no one else brings. Once you knew what that purpose was, the challenge was how you were going to bring it alive. There were stories and examples all over where it had been done, but this was the next level up. So I’d love for you to talk about how we got to this idea. What was the impact of thinking about the idea, as we were starting to say what we were going to work on? Over to you two.

13:31

Where did the idea for an International Day of Play come from?

Claire Thwaites13:31

If I try to answer your question, this idea about an International Day of Play germinated from the LEGO® brand framework, which is this fundamental driver for us. Our belief, and Ed said this earlier, is that children are our role models, and that we’re inspiring and developing the builders of tomorrow. That’s what we coalesce around every day. Yes, we have our day jobs. In government affairs we talk to government officials every day. But how do we create something special and, as you said, make that unique dent in the world that will fundamentally impact the lives of children?

What a moonshot that was. We coalesced around a storyline, and I remember this word “kingdoms” coming out, children playing in kingdoms around the world, where we coalesced around creating a day every year that is internationally recognized, where children can play. It’s as simple as that. The journey to get there wasn’t quite so simple. But it’s so tied into our LEGO® brand framework and the DNA of our company.

Ed Lewin14:58

Yeah, and if I think back to those days as well, Claire’s absolutely right. This is rooted in our mission and in our vision, and in the fact that children are our role models at the LEGO® Group. But the concept of play being under stress was particularly profound during those days. We were all at home, with many people having their kids or their nieces and nephews, homeschooling, not being able to get out, having restrictions on them. It brings back some trauma for people when they think about what they went through at that time. Play as a concept was particularly under pressure. And it led us to think about what we needed to do to promote that most vital right for children at this time.

Because the reality is, depending on your situation, some kids have the benefit of play pretty freely. There are many parts of the world where kids do not have that right. But at that time, nearly universally, people were finding out what it’s like when kids don’t get the chance to express themselves, to create, to imagine, to enjoy. So I think it was a combination of factors: the purpose of the company, and play being central to that, but also those really tough circumstances that we were living through, which brought this concept to life as an ambition for us.

16:47

Why take on a project that isn’t the day job?

Nick Craig16:47

From your perspective, okay, this is a nice idea. It’s not clear that it has a commercial impact. It’s a nice thing. And this takes time and energy away from other things. There’s a hint here that this was not easy to pull off. How many countries did you have to get to agree to do this thing?

Ed Lewin17:11

Well, in the end, we’re proud that over 135 governments co-sponsored the resolution. That’s a heavy lift. You try and find 135 governments to agree on anything.

Nick Craig17:24

How many times have you, in doing government and public affairs, gotten that many countries to agree to anything?

Ed Lewin17:32

This is a first for me. I’ve got a thirst for more, but this is a first. Claire has probably done it a few times in her career.

Nick Craig17:40

I think about this. And then you decide to do it on something that is kind of almost nice. So if I’m your boss and you come to me and say, “We did this thing, we have a purpose, and here’s what we’re going to do. And oh, by the way, all those other things you’d like us to do, we don’t have time for, because we’re going to go work on this instead.” I would be a little bit curious. So what is the powerful impact? What does this do for the LEGO® Group, your group, your team? So what?

Claire Thwaites18:17

Nick, can I chime in here? Because I’m with my boss [Ed Lewin], talking to you, and he gave us the latitude to do this. We had to do it alongside our day job, which is impacting the commercial realities of the business. That was fine. But this, for the whole team, was so meaningful and engaging and purposeful. That latitude was for us to utterly lean in and engage with governments around the world to deliver this. And one of our ambitions as the LEGO® Group is to reach tens of millions of children through play. So it was a no-brainer in so many ways. You did the day job, you did this. The other fabulous thing is that there was a coalition of other organizations around us that got mobilized as well. We really weren’t alone. [We were] a key driver, but there were so many other parties in the game too.

Ed Lewin19:19

I might just add to that from my seat. Obviously we have a core job here at the LEGO® Group, and that is to interface with governments on behalf of the company on matters of critical interest to us and the future of our business. At the same time, it made me realize what a privilege it is to work for a purposeful company like ours. Whether it was the CEO or the owner of the company or other members of the executive team, they immediately got the importance of this, and why it’s absolutely in line with the central mission of what we do.

Claire’s absolutely right to point to the coalition as well. We had serious commercial organizations on board, like Ingka IKEA, like Nike. We had some great NGOs: Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee, Right To Play. So we built a coalition of 22 organizations that felt this was important enough to speak to governments and others about. If we were out there on our own, we may have been a little more isolated, and the questions may have been asked. But we had that group of organizations with us.

And here’s the other critical factor, Nick. While I really believe in this mission and what we try to achieve, I didn’t want to be talking about it in five years’ time. I thought there was a window, in a post-pandemic context, where this would have uptake. That was certainly [clear] from the conversations that Claire and her team and others around the world were having. It was now, and this was the window we needed to get it done in. So I actually thought to myself, we’ve got to get it done by the end of 2024. And if not, I’d have asked myself questions about how much we resource it going forward.

21:31

How does a UN resolution win co-sponsors?

Nick Craig21:31

We all have some image of the UN and its voting process. Did they do the big voting process? And how did the actual event occur in which they said yes?

Ed Lewin21:46

There’s a very careful diplomatic dance that happens with something like this. We were fortunate to work with a really committed group of governments who believed independently in the importance of play, and had their own great track records on play and on the wellbeing of children. They worked with a number of other governments to explain the importance of this. The reality is, Nick, these things need consensus. You don’t have a yes-no vote. You build the support, and you see if there’s enough support to progress at various gates. At each gate, we seemed to have governments that were happy to continue, until the end point, where in March they tabled the resolution. And as I say, 135 governments signed up to co-sponsor, which is a healthy result.

Nick Craig22:59

And all of those people in all those countries put time into this.

Claire Thwaites23:04

This is the great thing. The UN has a declaration on the rights of the child, and in there, every child should fulfill their right to play. So there is a coalescence around this idea. And it’s fair to say that we had UN agencies really driving this alongside us as well, with UNICEF being one of the key partners for us. But who can say no to an International Day of Play, or the right to play?

Nick Craig23:38

Just a couple of things. You happen to be a toy company, so there’s an obvious interest. People could argue that. So you have competitors. Were they involved in any of this?

Ed Lewin23:54

They were. Yeah. Hasbro and Mattel were part of the coalition. And it was very important that we had that broad coalition, so this wouldn’t be seen as a commercial proposition, and it isn’t. It wouldn’t have gotten traction had that been the case. So we were really glad that they came into the coalition with us.

Nick Craig24:14

Okay. And as far as relationships, do you have a set of relationships you may not have had before you went on this journey?

Ed Lewin24:21

For sure. We’re all much wiser on the UN process, and we have a great network around the world, and in New York, where countries have their UN missions, that we’re delighted to have established. So yes.

24:43

What did the campaign mean for the team?

Nick Craig24:43

And relative to the esprit de corps, the sense of being part of this group, what’s been the effect of doing the work, as well as achieving it? What is it like to be part of this group?

Claire Thwaites24:57

It was a huge journey, and utter excitement as this emerged from our purpose program with you for the team. But it’s fair to say the journey was a bit of a roller coaster at times, internally and externally. It was quite the marathon. Sometimes you wondered, oh gosh, do we down tools? This is just too hard. How do we get countries on board, even though supporting it seemed like a no-brainer? So there really were ups and downs.

But through great leadership from Ed, from the team intimately involved in this, and from colleagues across the coalition and our team, chinks of light really began to show last September. We could feel the momentum building and building until we got to March. And we’re still pinching ourselves at the success from March. Even a couple of months on, we get to celebrate the first International Day of Play on the 11th of June this year, at short notice. But imagine 2025, when we really can lean into activations worldwide, to really have fun and play.

26:24

What made the difference when most big ambitions stall?

Nick Craig26:24

I would think anybody listening to this will say: everybody’s been in an organization that has a big vision and wants to do some crazy thing. We’ve all been in those systems, and most people have experienced the fact that most of those things don’t happen. Whether it’s about purpose or vision or a BHAG or whatever version, people can say, well, okay. But at the same time, you really pulled this thing off. You really did something. And it wasn’t your day job. Even more interesting is that it wasn’t your day job, and you had to do it in the gaps in between.

So the question is, what do you think is the difference that made the difference? What helped you do this thing? Because you’ve all been involved in initiatives that haven’t gone so well. What did you do, say, believe or know that helped you achieve something that the UN itself is probably celebrating, because they can’t get many of these things done?

Ed Lewin27:41

I think it’s a combination of things, Nick, and any one of them, if absent, may well have meant that we’re not in this place now. I think the journey started with the team purpose. Honestly, if we hadn’t had that team purpose session and that workshop, this wouldn’t have come about. It was the launchpad for us, to create that space.

Then from there, as you say, plenty of people can have that ambition. But there was a decision by my leadership team and myself to say: we are going to resource this. We’re going to put some resource behind this. We had great partners at the LEGO® Foundation who were bought into the concept as well, and also put some resource behind it. When you start resourcing something, suddenly it becomes more than a wish, more than words on a PowerPoint slide. There’s some accountability: if you’re going to put resource behind something, you want to show that you’re doing your best to make results happen. So I think that was important.

I think there was a need. If you look at play around the world, one in three kids and young people don’t have time to play. One in five of them don’t have the space to play. So suddenly you’ve got an ambition around an agenda, and you have a problem that you need to solve.

Then I think it goes on to belief. This is where the bravery comes in. In my job I have the good fortune to travel to a lot of different places around the world. I remember one of the first meetings I had on this, with a government minister. I was having a conversation with the minister about our footprint in the country, what we do. It was a pretty standard meeting. The minister was reading from their brief, and they looked relatively engaged. And I thought to myself, I’m just going to go for it. I said, “Minister, I’ve got a vision around an International Day of Play.” Suddenly the laptop in front of them shuts, they’re inspired, and we’re there for another hour talking about this concept. It suddenly made me realize this isn’t just us getting excited about this. When you talk to people outside, because it’s play, because it’s children, and because they see what we’ve all just been through, there’s going to be a lot of goodwill towards the idea, and people are going to see why this is important.

So I took that back to my team and I said, just go and have these conversations. No one’s going to say you’re a bad person if you start talking about an International Day of Play. It gave courage to people. Not every conversation was a fruitful one, and not everyone got a positive reaction. But in some markets and in some places, it really did. I think that’s how we got traction. Then you just have to have the bloody-mindedness to see the thing through. And I think as a group, we really, really did.

30:56

How did individual and team purpose show up in the result?

Nick Craig30:56

Say your purpose once again, Ed.

Ed Lewin30:59

Buckle up. I’ll play the money beat. You play your symphony.

Nick Craig31:04

Okay. For everybody, if you’re not laughing really hard right now, you have not been listening, because Ed is a hundred percent in his purpose. He’s told that story. This is Ed living his purpose at a thousand percent. Claire, your purpose is?

Claire Thwaites31:22

I know what purpose is. I’m just going to complement what Ed said, actually, because for my day job, I look after policy in the EU, and we were told, “The EU, no, we don’t support international days.” The vote came in March. Every single member state, 27 of them, voted for the International Day of Play. They were in it, and that was a lovely win.

Nick Craig31:50

You had something to do with that, I would think.

Claire Thwaites31:52

A team. The team.

Nick Craig31:54

Okay. And your purpose is, once again?

Claire Thwaites31:56

To be a cheerleader in the room where it happens.

Nick Craig32:00

Okay. I don’t know about anybody who’s listening, but you take those two purposes, and you take the purpose of the group, which is “purveyors of magic,” hint, hint, “calming the seas, shaping play-filled futures.” Oh my goodness. And you pick something that is so at the core of the group purpose and the leaders’ purposes. It is almost impossible not to engage, and to have people be thrilled at the possibility of doing it. It’s what everybody wants to live for. They put down the laptop and they listen. You’re the pattern interrupt of everything that everybody wants. So in some ways, everybody gets to go to heaven together, based on the thing that you guys help them go to.

So this is a wonderful, wonderful, beautiful expression of everything I’ve spent my life working on. If 10 years ago people had asked what I’d like to have happen 10 years from now, and I’d said a UN International Day of Play, they’d be like, “You are smoking something.” So it is so amazing. Now, we are releasing this on the UN International Day of Play, which today is June 11th. What are the other things that will be happening as a result of this June 11th day?

Ed Lewin33:25

Well, we have various events happening throughout the world on June 11th. I’m actually in New York, celebrating with stakeholders from the United Nations. But in different markets, different things are happening. One of the most gladdening things I’ve seen in the run-up to this June 11th is the different events that different organizations are taking on, and organically putting on, because of the opportunity that is now provided by this day. So as Claire said earlier, I think June 11th, 2024 is going to be a great celebration. But from 2025 onwards, we think it’s going to be bigger and better, and a real moment in the calendar for kids, for parents, for caregivers, for everyone to enjoy play. And that’s what really matters today.

Nick Craig34:15

Well, I want to thank everyone on this June 11th, UN day for play, for listening to the journey we’ve been on. Use this as a beautiful reminder of the potential power that purpose can have for making amazing things come true. I want to thank both of you for joining me today, and I look forward to continuing our adventures together. Till next time, we will catch you all soon with our next adventure on our Purpose to Impact podcast. So thank you all, and we’ll talk to you later.

Ed Lewin34:54

Thanks so much.

More on the LEGO® Group’s purpose work with CLI: Harnessing the Power of Team Purpose →