Performance Management Blog

The Square Wheels, LEGO Controversy: Thoughts on Leadership and Engagement (Part One)

In the blog post of yesterday, I shared the LEGO image that was sent to me with  comments that I was either collaborating with the author or that he was infringing on my intellectual property. The reality now, for all sorts of good reasons, is COLLABORATING!!

After all, we do make choices and some choices are simply a lot better than other choices. As I think about this, I think wheels within wheels because there are so many levels to the situation along with so many issues and so many possibilities.

Håkan Forss saw a cartoon and decided to do it “in LEGO” as he had been doing to a lot of other ideas. It looked like this:

The square wheels metaphor of Scott Simmerman expressed in Lego

One issue that I had was that the cartoon made it seem as if the guys on the right pushing and pulling the wagon were actually choosing not to consider possibilities for improvement. My thought was that it might sometimes be the wagon puller that does that, simply because they are isolated from the hands on reality of the wagon pushers, but that the wagon pushers also know that things could be different and better.

Wagon pushers have different perspectives than wagon pullers.

My Square Wheels One situation sets things up like this:

Square Wheels One copyrighted V1 small

Håkan then went back to find the original cartoon that he used as the framework for his expression in the top figure and I was surprised to see this work as his basis:

ToBusyToImproveI had never seen that cartoon. It also has no attribution as to copyright and there is no apparent information that I can find as to where it was published or who is the author. My thought, given that I have been using this theme of round wheels and square wheels since 1993, is that it is probably what is technically termed, a derivative product. And I DO need to know because we do not want the theme of “Square Wheels” to go into the public domain.

We literally have 300+ cartoons that have spun off that original idea, plus a few hundred other quotes, poems, haiku and one-liners that anchor to that theme and that are published in articles, blogs, training toolkits and other formats. Protecting the image called Square Wheels One is important to us.

report the author button

mailto:Scott@SquareWheels.com

In later posts along this same line, I will discuss some of the different aspects of our Square Wheels One illustration in comparison to Håkan Forss’ work and probably challenge him to illustrate a couple of those cartoons with his unique and interesting style of LEGO art.

And maybe Håkan and I can create some LEGO block interactive tools so you can have your workshop participants play with ideas for workplace improvement. After all, the round wheels are already in (my) wagon and the ideas for improvement already exist.

Don’t Just DO Something,
Stand There!

For the FUN of It!

Scott Simmerman, SurprisedDr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.

 
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s blog on Poems and Quips on Workplace Improvement is here.

LEGO® is a registered trademark of LEGO A/S, a corporation incorporated under the laws of Denmark.

 

Dr. Scott Simmerman

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of the amazing Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine team building game and the Square Wheels facilitation and engagement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced global presenter. -- You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com and a detailed profile is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottsimmerman/ -- Scott is the original designer of The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine teambuilding game and the Square Wheels® images for organizational development.

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3 Comments

  1. Håkan Forss

    It is really great to collaborate and fun to illustrate the Square Wheels concept in LEGO.

    When I made my LEGO version I filled the wagon with gold. One way you can look at it is, both the wagon puller and pusher are so focused on getting the gold so they don’t take a step back and see how they can improve.

    I often see this behavior in organizations that do product development. They are so focused on delivering short term value to their customer so they forget to take a step back and look at how they do the work.

    We should really plan daily work to be both delivering value AND improving the work.

    Reply
  2. Dr. Johnny Chung

    Round wheels outside???

    Reply
  3. Dr. Scott Simmerman

    It is a good question. Are outsiders to the team offering suggestions or are the wheels from other team members who are not involved? Are Round Wheels generally found within the wagon? Do the round wheels in an organization already exist or do they need invention now? Where is “disruptive innovation” in all this? Where is Lean wandering? Yep, this should make for another blog around how we each view things…

    Reply

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