By Janus Boye
Christian Vandsø Andersen has worked at the LEGO Group in various digital leadership roles since 2009. A screenshot from the member’s call, where Christian was in his home office.
Magic @ Work is here! Inner secrets from Christian Vandsø Andersen, a magician who is also VP at the LEGO Group.
The new book ‘Magic @ Work’ is a journey into the extraordinary and in a recent member's call, Christian told us more about the book, shared his perspective on combining magic and management, and even used a card trick to illustrate his point.
The book dives into the mesmerizing world of magic and teaches the reader how its principles can elevate your leadership, whether you're leading teams, projects, or even yourself. You can also discover the enigmatic techniques that magicians use to captivate audiences and apply them to leadership, innovation, and influence.
There’s more in the book, including the first publicly available documentation of the leadership model at the LEGO Group. The book is also written with a sad personal backstory, and we’ll get to that, but in the call, we started with Christian telling us about the idea behind the book, so let’s begin there.
Work and magic - Two worlds colliding
Our Danish UX group leader Kristina Larsen was among the first to secure a copy of Magic @ Work, the new book by Christian Vandsø Andersen and she kindly shared this photo shortly after the member’s call.
So how do you combine being VP Digital in a fast-growing team at the LEGO Group, while working as a magician at night?
In our call, Christian opened by talking about how initially these two seemingly separate worlds didn’t really co-exist. It wasn’t until a few years ago, when he was being interviewed at a public event and the question came up. As he talked about doing mind reading at corporate events and using his magic tricks and skills (hint: there’s no such thing as mind reading), he began to see how what he was doing in the magic world actually benefited him at day and in his work at the LEGO Group.
Christian also mentioned mentalism, and how fellow magicians have a code for not sharing their secrets, but then again, how are you to learn if nobody is willing to share?
In our call, he actually used one of the most popular methods used by mentalists which is called “peeking” This is when the magician is able to get information that nobody has seen or heard before. Mentalists also use techniques like “cold reading” which is when they say statements in order for you to agree or disagree with their statements. If you view the recording (embedded at the end), you’ll see this in action.
In the member’s call on his book ‘Magic @ Work’ Christian also illustrated some of his points by showing us a card trick. This was indeed a unique experience and for most on the call, probably the first time they’ve seen magic on a Teams call.
Thinking more about it, how can you learn to be a magician at work without first learning magic? Several of Christian's most popular tricks and effects are being explained in the book, so you can perform them at your next gathering.
Yet, how is all this relevant to work? To Christian, it’s all about how you capture and engage an audience, and as a leader in any large, complex and global organisation, probably any organisation regardless of size, that’s an important skill. Or as he said: “This book is all about using the secrets of a magician to supercharge your career, whether you're leading people, projects, or yourself. “
Like Einstein said and this quote is used in the book:
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious”
Perhaps that’s why magicians guard their secrets, but that’s for another time.
A magical leadership book for people leading people
Having already published a management book in 2022 on Wonderful digital leadership, this book was also intended to be aimed at leading people, while introducing the magic element.
A photo from book - it’s packed with small insights like this
As Christian said, he doesn’t see leadership as just a position, it’s an act. It’s something you do and magic can actually play a good role in fostering psychological safety. It’s an element of surprise, an element of fun, where people can let their guards down and it removes both organisational barriers and the power distance.
In the book he also makes the point that just like a close-up magic set evolves with every feedback loop, so does or should your product. It’s all about learning quickly, so that you can integrate insights into your product.
There’s also the connection to curiosity, which Christian describes as the ability to spot and catch ideas, inventions, concepts and novelties in the imaginary world and bring them into reality.
An important part of the book is also storytelling, more specifically the power of narratives.
The power of narratives
To quote Christian:
“You are not you - you are your narrative”
”You are not you” is one of the more provocative statements in the book. Christian claims that in most organisations, you are your narrative. You are what people are saying about you. You are your story.
Very few people know the real you. Your colleagues know your story. When you get promoted, it’s not you, it’s the story that is being told about you in the organisation. “Seb is a hard worker”. Once people start saying that, it starts to become true. And not only that, you will live your story, so while you shape your story, the story shapes you as well.
A strong organisational narrative is an advantage, and you should care deeply about it. If you happen to get a bad narrative, changing it is hard. Even if you change behaviour, the narrative can continue to live. That’s because narratives live in “the eather” between people, and it lives separately from you. Treasure your narrative, and, more importantly, use the techniques from the book to take control of your narrative instead of letting other people write your story.
A final note on storytelling: Back in 2020, we did a member’s call that went deeper on this topic with American behavioral psychologist Susan Weinschenk. Read more: The power of self stories to drive behavior. She has more insights on how you get people to change their self stories.
Learning from the LEGO Group leadership model
How you behave makes you a leader, not your title. This is also one of the aspects of The Leadership Playground – which is the name of the leadership model of The LEGO group.
The book provides exclusive insight behind the scenes of the development of this model. Christian needed a good example of an emerging process for the book, and as he was one of the people who actually crafted the model, you will get front row seats to this inspiring model where the process of creating it is just as inspiring as the model itself.
The key point of the model is, that it is supposed to “energise everybody everyday” by encouraging everybody to be Brave, Curious & Focused:
Brave means, that there should be enough psychological safety for everyone to speak their mind.
Curious means, that there should be room for curiosity in your everyday work
Focused is all about focusing on what’s important.
A sad personal backstory
Towards the end of the member’s call, Christian mentioned that he is out on sick leave and not coming back. He wrote this book while terminally ill with cancer.
A screenshot towards the middle of the 30-minute member’s call. As in the past where Christian has shared at conferences around the world, including the Boye Aarhus 20 conference, he airs warmth, the conduit of influence. And clearly he enjoys sharing his experiences.
While the sadness of knowing he was dying sometimes shines through, Magic @ Work is, in general, filled with warmth and love - and a lot of humour.
Learn more about magical digital leadership
Do follow Christian on LinkedIn for updates on his thinking and useful snippets from the book. You can naturally also secure your own copy of Magic @ Work on Amazon (more purchase options coming soon). The hardcover edition is not sold out just yet.
The conversation on digital leadership continues in our peer groups and at our upcoming Boye conferences. Hope to see you there!
Finally, you can also lean back and enjoy the recording from the call.