A Lego Lesson in Leadership

You've likely read a summary of the story: An utterly unremarkable construction worker figure in a Lego city literally falls into a tale where he discovers the "Piece of Resistance," a plastic doodad that is the only way to stop a dastardly villain (modeled on a whole host of functionally-fixed villains, really) from destroying the world.  Our hero, who has never ever deviated from the "official instructions" for anything, has to discover what it means to be "the Special" and lead the battle.

Einstein told us that to do the same thing over and over again yet expect different results is insane.

It's common sense that if everyone in one boat rows in their own direction, that boat will go nowhere.

And yet we build everything in our society around aggressive competition and selling messages rather than creating solutions.

So how do we build a solution?  For that, we need to co-design a plan.  But we've always been able to do that.  What's holding us back, what are we waiting for?  A missing piece?

What's our Piece of Resistance?  

If everyone only listens for what's in it for them, nobody will see what the big picture looks like. 

Emmet can set you free, but the rest is up to us.

We realize, with perhaps a shock of recognition, that the tension between creativity and necessary rules is hardly limited to the Lego universe.  And we get a lesson about how that strain might be resolved.