A culture that listens. A role that grows🌱 Meet JS 👋
JS began as a Finance Business Partner in South Korea before moving into global roles in Denmark, supporting areas like commercial finance, our commercial development team, and leading global planning. But a shift in his focus towards building capability and shaping the future sent his career in a new direction.
“I do believe things happen for a reason. If you do good things, good things happen to you. LEGO® bricks also had a special meaning for me. I played a lot with LEGO® as a kid. So, when the opportunity to work here came up, I grabbed it with both hands.
“I realized later in my LEGO® career that I didn’t want a very traditional finance role. I was more interested in questions like: How do we prepare for tomorrow, what capabilities do we need, How do we streamline and build smarter processes That led me into project work.”
One of his proudest achievements was leading the development of Lumos Topline, the global financial planning tool for the Markets & Channels Finance organization.
“Often people look at new tools to just automate and just do it easier vs. what is done e.g. excel. But we wanted to think differently. How do we plan faster, more efficiently, more touchless, but more importantly how do we combine and utilize the data sets we already have so we just don’t redo it and have hundreds of people sit in spreadsheets”
The outcome was dramatic: global forecasting reduced from three weeks to one week, and eventually nowadays to a single day, with far fewer people involved.
“It showed the power of connecting data in new ways, create smart calculations and drives based logic, being willing to rethink our ways of working and be disruptive.
It was this future-focused mindset that brought JS to our Business Service Operations (BSO) Prague office, where he now leads the global service team: Finance Controlling and Partnering (FCP).
“We saw that some tasks sitting with senior finance business partners were necessary but taking time away to focus on strategic dialogues and actions required at that level. The question became: can we shift some of this work to the BSO, where there is scale, structure and the ability to standardize and create more efficient E2E processes globally”
That exploration led to a pilot, which led to a global rollout across the CFO Partner organizations, which led to JS’s new role.
“Now I’m leading the global team we envisioned. We are early in the journey, but it’s exciting. We’re looking at how we prepare for a future to be more efficient and productive and where data, reporting and AI become more important, how we challenge the status quo and how we create scalability and value for the finance organization.”
What struck him most in Prague is the culture.
“I’ve only been here about four months, so you could say I’m still in the honeymoon phase. But people are extremely helpful. You see a willingness to improve what we do for the LEGO Group, and to go the extra mile. It makes me happy and grateful to come to work.”
JS sees the BSO as a place where collaboration truly comes to life.
“We are a relatively flat organization. People jump in to help each other. But it also means we need to improve at things like saying no respectfully and clearly. We tend to want to help everyone. That’s part of our culture, but we need to do it in a way that is sustainable and supports the bigger picture.”
As for work–life balance, he sees flexibility as a strength rather than a rule.
“I’m probably in the office five days a week. That’s my style. But the important thing is choice. The model lets each person do what works best for them. The best of both worlds looks different for everyone.”
JS is clear about one thing: join the LEGO Group for the right reasons.
“Do not join only because the brick is cool. Join for the culture and our vision and mission. If you come from a place where hierarchy or politics drive decisions, this will feel different. You need to be a team player, even if you’re an individual contributor. We listen to each other, and we speak up when something is not going well. If you want to grow and succeed that dialogue matters.
“This is somewhere you can really develop and grow as a person. If you want to prepare for the future and help shape it, this is a great place to be.”
Just imagine your LEGO® career.