LEGO is one of the world's leading manufacturers of play materials. The LEGO Group has headquarters in Denmark and main offices in the USA, UK, China, and Singapore.
As LEGO wished to strengthen the collaboration between a group of Danish employees and their Chinese colleagues and partners, they sought C3 Consulting’s assistance.
We partnered with LEGO to design a two-months Chinese cultural training programme. The training was divided up into 18 lessons of Chinese culture training and a crash course in Chinese language of 8 lessons. The target group was 24 LEGO employees of various professions, including designers, engineers, and department managers.
The participants’ own specific case-stories formed the backbone of the training.
As a first step, each participant described the challenges they experienced in the collaboration with the Hong Kong Chinese / mainland Chinese colleagues and Chinese subcontractors.
During the following lessons, the participants worked with their own cases, focusing on questions like:
During the training, the participants acquired practical tools to communicate and collaborate more effectively with their Chinese colleagues and subcontractors.
In addition, they shared valuable experiences and built a common frame of reference that has helped LEGO to further its collaboration with China.
"Thanks for a well-prepared and committed course. The concept of conducting a pre-course interview with colleagues from Billund, Shenzhen and HK has no doubt helped to fulfil our requirements, as it was so successful.
What we now have is a common and improved understanding of the reasons behind some of the communication problems that we experience day-to-day.
Your way of presenting and engaging our employees during the course has brought us all together and has helped us to move forward in our working day. Our expectations of the inspiration the course would give us have been completely met."
Per Høvsgård
Senior director
LEGO
"In the relatively few lessons we had, you managed to foster an understanding of why things do not always go according to plan and the reasons behind it.
I am certain that we, as the lucky ones to experience your inspirational teaching, will save LEGO Company many misunderstandings and thereby additional costs."
Finn Daugaard Madsen
Project Manager
LEGO
"Now, two months after the C3 Consulting course, I can safely say it is incredible how much effect it has had. I had been working in China for four years before Annette came on the scene with all her knowledge of the country.
Before the course, I didn’t know an awful lot about China or anything about guanxi, the Chinese way of networking, and therefore did not really make the most of my network in China. I do now, and the last time I was in China, working with the Chinese was completely different from how it was before the course.
Communication has also improved and there are not as many misunderstandings as before. When there are problems I can see why they happen, and solve them."
Frank Nygaard Pedersen
Engineer
LEGO
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C3 Consulting ApS
kontakt@c3consulting.dk
+ 45 60 17 08 17
Bjerrelide 3
DK - 8783 Hornsyld
Denmark
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