In this episode of The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast, host Edmund Thomson Jones speaks with Mads Nipper, board chair, former CEO, and energy transition advocate. Mads reflects on his leadership journey across diverse industries, sharing lessons on business transformation, building trust, and leading with purpose through uncertainty. He also discusses the challenges of steering organizations through the global energy transition, the critical role of boards, and what it takes to balance vision with agility in volatile times.

Welcome to The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. Heidrick is the premier global provider of diversified solutions across senior level executive search, leadership, assessment and development, team and organizational effectiveness, and culture shaping. Every day we speak with leaders around the world about how they're meeting rising expectations and managing through volatile times, thinking about individual leaders, teams, organizations, and society. Thank you for joining the conversation.

Edmund Thomson Jones: Welcome to The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. I'm Edmund Thomson Jones, a partner in our London office, and a member of our private equity and venture capital practice. I have a particular interest in energy transition, climate adaptation, and corporate decarbonization. And to that end, I'm pleased to be speaking with Mads Nipper today, a seasoned senior executive with a distinguished career across globally recognized companies in branded consumer goods, industrial technology, and the energy sector.

Most recently, Mads was CEO of Ørsted from 2021 to 2025 leading the company during a critical phase of the global energy transition. Before this, he was CEO of Grundfos from 2014 to 2020, which he joined after a distinguished executive career at the LEGO Group. Mads is known for his proven track record in leading business transformation and for championing sustainability and purpose-driven leadership.

He's also accumulated more than 20 years of non-executive board experience across public, private equity, and foundation-owned companies. Mads, thanks for being here and for taking the time to speak with us. 

Mads Nipper: It is a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. 

Edmund Thomson Jones: Let's start with your leadership journey. One of the things that really leaps out to me about your experience when I review it is how different the industries are that you've worked in.

So, starting with LEGO, then into industrial technology, and then more recently into a pioneer in the energy transition. What are the lessons that have carried through? What's remained the same in that leadership journey? 

Mads Nipper: Yes, first and foremost, I've never made a career plan, as it's pretty obvious from my resume, and I don't plan to make one, because the realities always turn out differently.

So, what I have done on my leadership journey is to sort of combine a few principles to say, is this something that truly matters? Am I in a position to make a real difference to society, to the business, to people? And if it's something where I feel I can add value, I can learn something, I'll do it, even though on paper it might not exactly be a logical step.

Edmund Thomson Jones: Can you zoom us into that first transition from LEGO into Grundfos?

Mads Nipper: Yes, I'd be very happy to. I was privileged over 23 years with LEGO to, I mean, start as a young graduate and try all kinds of new things and the first four jobs I had never existed before, so I got lucky to have sort of a very free playground, so to speak—no pun intended—with LEGO, by shaping new jobs and not, therefore, also from an early stage in my career, not be intimidated by the fact that the frames were not very clear, and therefore also not being afraid of trying something entirely new. I went through everything from a life-threatening crisis to a phenomenally successful decade from 2004 to 2014, where the company went from the brink of bankruptcy to being 90% of the total global profit pool of the entire global toy industry.

And having tried that, having an exceptionally strong team, it dawned on me that the sort of marginal return on my presence could probably be greater somewhere else. But when Grundfos then called and said, we'd like you to join, I literally said to them, you probably have the wrong number, because I spent 23 years in play materials, and this is about water pumps, I don't even know how such a thing works. But what the chair said at the time was, you should listen to the kind of impact this company has on energy efficiency. So, 10% of the world's electricity consumption at that time was water pumps; Grundfos being a world leader meant they were able to truly shape probably percentages of the world's electricity consumption, of which I had no idea. And second, this was a company whose recent journey was of a deteriorating performance; I felt I could probably make a difference.

So I jumped, and I never regret it for a second, but what it also taught me, which was extremely helpful, after 23 years in business, I found a totally different curiosity because I was forced to listen to every single detail I heard because I didn't know about the company, its culture, the industry, the customers, the technology; my level of alertness to listening to everybody about everything just got boosted, which was a gift.

Edmund Thomson Jones: How do you lead though when you haven't the accumulated experience that the people that you are leading have? 

Mads Nipper: Yeah, I was privileged that in the first steps of that turnaround, we managed to triple the profits in five years. So, a very solid improvement journey. But the first steps of that were not very difficult.

But what I did at the time, and have always done when I start something new, is I talked to a lot of people and I essentially only asked them one question, which is: what would you do if you were me?

And whilst some executives may feel I can't do that because it exposes me, I don't come in with a strong view; I have always believed in many sources of the truth, and I probably spoke to 50 people in Grundfos and the sum of that, there, was everything—they knew it all. So, my role was to, of course, to prioritize all the input I heard, and to ensure that we really put action behind the words.

Edmund Thomson Jones: How was it building trust with those? I'm assuming that the executive team you joined probably felt that they knew a lot more about the industry than you. 

Yes. Well, I did change approximately half of the team. Not from day one, but I found out that somebody wanted to be on the journey, and some were not really on it. And therefore, in a very respectful way, I believe we exchanged, and I found out quite early that the operational part, so the entire supply chain, the procurement manufacturing, was one of the root causes of the financial underperformance, and there were so many good people, but it needed a totally different focus. So, one of the things I'm most happy about, I recruited—believe it or not—to a family- and foundation-owned Danish company, a French automotive executive, which, without stereotyping, is a different cultural background.

But Stefan, which was his name, just did a wonderful job of bridging strong heritage and culture and purpose drive with a rigorous systematic improvement of supply chain performance, which was at the very core of the company's transformation. So, building on the talent, which was there, and bringing on critical new capabilities, that was done within a relatively limited number of months, and that turned out to be the right team to drive the company forward. 

Edmund Thomson Jones: Super interesting. And then looking at Ørsted and, and that move, that again was a bit of an industry shift, maybe not quite so extreme as LEGO to Grundfos; did you change anything in your approach there, or having done it once, was it the same again?

Mads Nipper: Yeah, it was different this time because whereas Grundfos was a company with a sort of a recent deterioration of performance, which was painful because we needed to make some difficult choices, but not particularly hard to find out what to do, Ørsted was a different story because the company had ridden all the benefits of zero interest rates, over-capacity in the supply chain, generous subsidy schemes, and I knew at the time, of course, that wouldn't continue forever.

So, a totally different starting point where it was arguably one of the countries’ or the global industries’ crown jewels, and therefore that was a big difference. And then in many ways, the energy industry is a distinctively different business. I would actually argue that that step was at least as big because doing sort of multi-billion-dollar EPC projects and developments is distinctively different both in its value creation formula but also in all the market dynamics than any manufacturing company on the planet. 

Edmund Thomson Jones: This topic that you mentioned with your experience at Grundfos of bringing in talent from other industries like yourself and being able to kind of create teams who are multidisciplinary, it's something that very much interests me in the work that we do in decarbonization and especially in hard-to-abate industries where something has to change, and you need to bring in fresh perspectives, partly because also maybe there are not the experienced executives with the talent that you need in the area that you're looking at if you're looking at new technologies or areas of innovation.

But it's always this tough balance between whether you change too much of a culture and bring in too much of that kind of new experience, or whether you are leaning too much on the old way of doing things and not adapting with the times. How do you think about that balance; how have you thought about that balance?

Mads Nipper: I fully agree. In my view, it's extremely important to avoid any of the extremes because I do think—which by the way, is one of the key reasons why I have chosen, despite having more than full-time jobs, to always serve on one board next to it—it is in order not to get tunnel vision on the industry and the company I'm actually in, because there is a different reality and the strategic inspiration from how do other companies operate; I think there's huge benefit to that. But if you drain a company for true industry and culture insight, you are at risk of just navigating entirely wrong.

So, I think, I mean my start in Ørsted, I was obviously not an experienced energy executive, but what I had done for the better part of 30 years was to truly operate globally, it was to have a laser sharp customer focus. And at the time the intent with Ørsted was to take a sort of geographically very concentrated business and globalize more. It was given that there was a clarity that obviously states and countries would not be the only customers; there would be much more of a sort of a PPA market, a power purchase agreement market with large corporates.

There was an intent to make the company more customer centric, all of which I could bring. But obviously with what happened in the industry, both with the cost of capital, the supply chain, inflation, and so on, the agenda turned out to be slightly different. 

Edmund Thomson Jones: I want to come onto that last point, but just while you're talking about the mix of experience the boards can bring, if we are thinking about the energy transition decarbonization and the need to bring in talent from other industries in order to help companies innovate within the space, what do you think boards can do to help executives who are coming in from different industries get up to speed?

Mads Nipper: So, obviously understanding the board level intent and context of the company's journey is important no matter where you are: if you come in as a new CEO or executive, getting to know as much as you can about the context, not just operationally in the job you are supposed to run, but very much what is the journey? And the interesting thing is that many boards sort of, when things get really difficult, there's this expression, then we get closer to management.

In its own strange way, I actually see it slightly different because management will instinctively, when things get difficult, become even more operational, even more focused, on the liquidity management, on balance sheet management, on risk management, because of course they do. That's what is right in front of their noses.

So, I actually see that in many cases what the board should do is to say, how do we ensure that we are still aligned on the direction of travel longer term for the company? That we are still balancing strategic with operational perspective, so we don't do away with critical capabilities, because we need to take more shortsighted actions.

And I think this is one of the things where boards need to be—whether it's new or slightly more tenured executives and CEOs coming in—they need to, at any given time, say, what is the unique value add that the board can give in this situation? And in many cases, I actually think instinctively, unless it's a life-threatening situation, I think boards actually have a tendency to take the wrong action, which is just to push management to do more of what they already instinctively do.

Edmund Thomson Jones: Yeah, interesting. And maybe there's a point there where boards are all execs themselves, and they have a sense of, well, I know how that goes, and they want to get their hands in and push it. But it's interesting to hear you talking about the role of a board in elevating management in the hard moments to keep the kind of long-term perspective as well as the immediate short-term one.

It strikes me that that's extremely important right now when you look at the energy industry, and particularly when you think about net zero and the energy transition. It's so difficult for companies in that sector at the moment to figure out how to navigate really choppy seas right now, as well as keep an eye on where you're actually eventually supposed to be going by 2050. I mean, is that even possible for companies at the moment when there's such critical challenges right now? 

Mads Nipper: The perspective on where the company's going overall on its journey, I think it's really important to keep intact. So, a company like Ørsted whose vision is a world that runs entirely on green energy, that is a guiding star that means that of course it would be a choice to say we stop building anything, and we operate and become a cash-generating machine—I'm making this up, of course. But if that was a case, that would be a choice. And in a highly challenged, volatile, and unpredictable industry, it could also be a real choice.

But then the company, the board would need to say, are we prepared to change our vision? Because if we stop developing and building anything and use the assets we already have built, then our vision is not, it cannot be. So, to me, again, here the board's role is not to say we should forget everything about where we said we were going, but neither should the board say we stick to the plan at all costs.

So, not speaking specifically about the Ørsted situation, but in any industry hit by extreme turbulence, my view is the board and the CEO need to constantly say, are we still on sort of the vectors of the journey that we were on? But be extremely agile. When do we get there? How do we get there? Take offshore wind as an example. Is it realistic to keep? Whether you are a country or a company like Ørsted or RWE, is it realistic to keep your 2030 ambitions as they looked two years ago? Of course not. Realities have dramatically changed in almost every aspect, but does it mean that we should just forget everything about ambitions?

I don't think so. The company should just say, this is still where we are going, but we need to navigate the realities because at the end of the day, nothing gets built if we don't deliver a decent shareholder return, return on investment, and, therefore, rather than promising we will have that done by a certain year, then recommit to say we will do it, but we don't know whether it takes one or two or three years to find that formula where we can recreate a profitable journey to pour in billions of dollars again. 

That, to me, is an example of how you can still uphold a direction, rather than leaving both your company and the industry in a complete vacuum, saying we don't know what to do.

Edmund Thomson Jones: It's funny, just circling back on what you were saying about boards, I mean, we were talking about a board as though it's a thing, but of course it's a collection of individuals as well, and that sense of creating alignment around a vision, it is in fact a discussion that needs to happen amongst individuals, and that alignment needs to be reached, I guess, through consensus and with the chair kind of steering you. You are a chair, you've been a chair; how do you, with very limited touch points with seasoned executives that will all have their own perspectives, how do you create that alignment around what can be quite a difficult vision to share?

Mads Nipper: I think one of the things that definitely needs to happen is that the people who join the board, assuming I know somebody could have a very long tenure on a board, fundamentally share the vision of what the company is doing is important. So that's almost a selection criteria, but for the chair it is really also leveraging individual conversations with the board. The chair must have individual conversations with the board members, especially when things are difficult, not only to align on sort of do we support management in this journey, whether that's an acquisition or a reduction of the ambition level or something like this, but if a chair starts to sense that any or more members are sort of drifting on and off on a tangent and being more strategically unaligned, there of course needs to be a conversation, and therefore the chair's ability or the chairship's ability to diagnose when something becomes more structural is critical.

Edmund Thomson Jones: I mean, in that way it sounds similar to the way a CEO would deal with their executive team. Yeah. It's super interesting to hear how you kind of manage that dynamic.

I think what kind of comes out is how people-focused you are as a leader. I've heard you talk in the past about the need to listen and to kind of communicate with your teams and bring people along. I wanted to put something to you, which I guess comes out of the valley, when you look at the kind of very different industries, when you look at the growth of AI companies in this space, you hear a lot about a push to do away with meetings altogether, to do away with any one-to-one time with the CEO, and certain CEOs, I think, have publicly said that they try and have no one-to-one time with any of their team members.

And it seems a little bit at odds with the style of leadership that you seem to have cultivated and that you kind of prioritize. I'm interested in just your thoughts on that style of leadership, whether or not that works, whether meetings are indeed outdated. 

Mads Nipper: Yeah. I mean, in a podcast you can't see my hair color, but it would reveal that I was active way before AI was even a concept, but I very much believe that business is ultimately also about relations and even at sort of an emotional level between human beings. I also believe that there are interactions, be it in meetings or casual, informal conversations you can just have in a lunch break or stopping by somebody's office, that are irreplaceable.

But I respect other views because I try not to make myself a judge on does everybody need to be in the office or is it perfectly fine to work remotely? Do we need meetings? All I can say is that I think it is very important for any leader to know your operating model in terms of how do you best create impact.

And I am, I don't know if it's a phrase, but I consider myself a social thinker, so all my most original and I believe value-creating thoughts come in dialogue with other people, full stop, whereas I know I have good friends and people from my network who do that when they're in complete solitude and silence and just sit and think very long and hard and I don't think there's a right or wrong, but I think being very mindful about how do you best think but also how do you best create impact.

And I know for a fact after 35 years of an executive career, one of my greatest abilities is to make the people whom I work with a better version, a more inspired version, of themselves. And that's not to say that I have sort of a special gift, but I've learned that that is more effective than for me to come sort of down the mountain with all the answers.

And I respect that there are some people who are brilliant—I’ve met strategic minds that I'm flabbergasted about how wise these people are—and I don't think there's a standard mold for how you are a CEO, but I think leveraging your strengths and being humble and curious about the areas and asking for help in the areas where you are not necessarily world class is a starting point for all great leadership.

Edmund Thomson Jones: Do you think the leadership requirements have changed at all for the energy industry in particular over the last few years? Or have they just got more urgency on everything? Everything's more important. 

Mads Nipper: Yeah, it has certainly become a lot more difficult on all accounts because the returns have diminished, cost of energy is extremely capital intensive, and we came out of a no or negative interest environment, and that is no longer the case.

We saw in renewables specifically, we saw sort of after five years of deflation, we saw 30, 40% inflation. We see that these are, especially for some parts of renewables, especially wind, they're very long industries, so there's a very long time between commitment and realization of the projects.

And in a world where geopolitics, tariffs, global conflicts, and monetary policy moves at sort of warp speed, the risk of doing something very wrong has gone up. So, I think the demand on leaders has probably not in its fundamental sort of attributes changed, but the ability to be incredibly agile in an industry which is not built to be agile is important. And I think, and this may be my bias, one of the most important things you can do is over-communicate to your team. What you don't want is an organization who feels for their jobs, who don't know where we are going: so, communicating even more intensely, even when you don't know, because then your team knows that you don't know, and that removes an uncertainty that there's not a big plan being built behind your back and so on. So, I think there are different requirements and the ability to avoid being paralyzed by uncertainty is also greater than before.

Edmund Thomson Jones: You mentioned the word agility just now. Especially in the energy industry, agility—it strikes me as an outsider: is that even possible in an industry which has let's say three to ten-year permitting cycles and projects that are going to take two years to build; you know, you are looking ten years before anything comes online, how can you be agile in an industry with such long-term time horizons? 

Mads Nipper: I had a colleague in my earlier Ørsted days who said in extremely difficult times, you need to spend more money on building options, and you need to make less final investment decisions, which I think is wise advice because instead of saying now it's uncertain, so we are paralyzed, what you can do is build optionality for new projects or get new acreage or explore new options and make new partnerships that could be scaled; those are options you are buying at a relatively low cost, meaning that if and when the industry conditions change, you can come out of the gates fast because you have options, whereas taking final investment decisions in something where you're not stuck between a rock and a hard place, because you already committed so much and committed to a deadline, you have to, if you don't want to leave a project with gigantic costs, but I think there are paths of action for everybody. But I do think also based on my own experience, when you have projects that are awarded under such difficult or different circumstances than the realities today, it is extremely difficult. But for most companies in the energy transition, I would argue that building optionality rather than just ploughing ahead blindfolded with investments is a good way to say we may need to slow down now; once conditions change, we can actually come out faster than we did before we went into the slump. 

Edmund Thomson Jones: I guess, is there an element of bravery in that though, because you are in some ways slowing down your timeframe to financial return, and in times where it's choppy and you're under financial pressure, you are kind of saying, let's put ourselves under more financial pressure, as opposed to committing to something that, in theory, you know, you should be able to get some return from sooner. 

Mads Nipper: Yeah. But I think the biggest dilemma is not so much on ploughing ahead because I think everybody right now in the industry energy transition industry is looking more at risks than return because of the more recent history: that's just extremely difficult. So given geopolitics, given supply chain disruptions, and so on, of course there's a huge focus on risks and that, as we talked about, no doubt that in the energy transition, there needs to be a healthy financial return on those investments, full stop, otherwise, it's not scalable.

I do believe that when the reduced plan of Ørsted was launched, what we said was we are slowing down to be able to speed up. So, it was not sort of slowing down and letting go of all the people who know what they're doing, because if you need to rehire teams, then of course it'll take years to rebuild that capability. So, finding out how do we take a much less risky approach, how do we commit to much less short-term sort of firm investments because the uncertainties are too big, but how do I avoid cutting into the core capabilities and the cheap options that can allow us to move faster, I think that's a balance that needs to be struck. And then, always, there are always pockets of opportunity in any crisis, always. 

Edmund Thomson Jones: Oh, crisis is often what creates, you know, the next big success story. I mean, Ørsted was born out of crisis, I guess.

Mads Nipper: Yeah. And I'm, despite all the current hardship, I am a hundred percent convinced that the company will reemerge as a strong force in the energy transition. 

Edmund Thomson Jones: What do you believe will define successful leadership in the energy transition and in climate over the next decade? And what capabilities do you think we need to develop in order to get there? 

Mads Nipper: Hmm. I think it is about believing wholehearted in the vision that we do need the energy transition, but navigating the realities with such discipline that you don't end up being blinded by the vision. And then, I think, back to leadership, leading is really about other people, not just your employees, which is hopefully obvious, but it's also to help inform all your stakeholders about what are the requirements, what does it take to succeed, how can we together mitigate some of the risks? How can we build a supply chain where there are healthy financials? How can we mitigate the risk, but really take leadership beyond leading yourself, leading your financials, the quarterly results, and your team, but to take a leadership role in society with all the relevant stakeholders because any detransition is so much more profound in its impact than arguably any other industry than AI and tech. And I think without that broad stakeholder view, we will continue to run into challenges that will set us back.

Edmund Thomson Jones: You mentioned advice that you were given when you joined as CEO. What advice would you give to a CEO entering the energy transition industry for the first time now as you did? What nuggets of wisdom would you pass on? 

Mads Nipper: I don’t think I can provide any wisdom that's not sort of relatively obvious, but don't make too many assumptions about how this is exactly how things will play out, because I genuinely think that the unpredictability is very high. But don't lose sight of a necessity of making this transition happen.

Don't lose sight that this market will be there. It does so many good things, its industrial policy, its decarbonization, its energy independence from sources we'd rather avoid. It does so many good things that upholding an ambition that this is something that must and will happen but finding a way where you mitigate risks of radical short-term impacts, whatever that is, is vital. 

And then I think probably more general advice to leaders in companies that get hit by a tsunami or more than one is don't ever forget to be a leader because in my personal experience, in the toughest moments of my Ørsted days especially, where I, if I'm totally honest, on a weekday, would feel sorry for myself because this was just brutal, and sadly continues to be, but what I did always, after sort of taking a few deep breaths, I always stood up and walked the hallways and talked to people, looked them in the eyes, explained what was going on, because I think one of the biggest risks is that, when under the most pressure, leaders forget to be leaders, and that is unforgivable. 

Edmund Thomson Jones: There's a question of energy though, I guess, personal energy, because I'm sure all leaders want to be that, but there's a question of how you do that genuinely with authenticity at times when you yourself might be depleted. How did you focus on providing yourself with that emotional energy to be able to spend on your team?

Mads Nipper: I'm lucky because I get energy from being with other people and as a matter of fact, one of my three personal values is to always try to give more energy than I take; what a world we'd have if everybody tried that. But I've done that because if you give other people energy you get more back. 

So, it's a virtuous cycle and I learned that early in my LEGO days. And in that sense, the world is actually relatively simple on that specific parameter. But I can tell you that after the massive impairment of the New Jersey projects we had, and being toasted in an investor call for two hours, getting up from the chair and going to lunch with hundreds of colleagues was extremely, extremely tough.

But when I got back, I was in a much better mood than before. So not only is it your duty to do, but my guess is that unless you're an incredibly introvert person, it will carry its own reward.

Edmund Thomson Jones: Very tangentially, it does remind me, Ernest Hemingway once said, the art of writing is the art of applying one's bum to a seat. And I wonder if the art of leading sometimes is just to open one's mouth to somehow find the energy to initiate that conversation, and then once that happens it'll look after itself; the energy will start flowing back to you as you kind of give it out. 

Mads Nipper: Yeah. And even if you don't have the energy for a conversation, just being visible and looking people in the eye. I mean, one of the greatest privileges of being a CEO is that you can give so much with so little effort. And if you meet somebody in an elevator or on your way to lunch, just give a small smile, or even better if you can remember their name, that's something they'll tell the spouse about in the evening, and it cost you zero calories to do. 

Edmund Thomson Jones: You mentioned giving more energy than you take as one of your values. What are the other two? 

Mads Nipper: It is to always be present where I am. And for disclaimer, I'm never fully successful with any of my values. And then it is balance. I don't believe the world is black or white; I believe that most wise things are always in between, whether that's your life choice, whether that's the way you keep diverse views in an executive team, a little bit in the pressure cooker to arrive at something, whether it's no meetings or endless meetings, without lacking decisiveness, I think a balance of perspectives of life, of the way you spend your time, is so vital. So, it's trying to give more energy than I take. It's being present where I am, because that's both good for other people but also good for your quality of life. And then balance. Those are my three values.

Edmund Thomson Jones: I'd love personal advice. How do you do the presence thing, because I always wish I were less a slave to my phone and, I'm sure you know, phones are designed to be addictive, I'm sure you experience the same thing; how do you keep that distraction at bay? How have you developed that habit?

Mads Nipper: None of us do. That's your honest answer. Yeah, we all get distracted, which is why I gave the disclaimer, but I do think the best example—I mean, you have a two-year-old. When I had a two-year-old, I was already at that time a senior vice president at LEGO, I was blessed with a fantastic career start, and I found myself that when I was at work in that late meeting I said I should be with my family, and when I was with my family on a Sunday evening having dinner, my brain was saying, how soon can I get to the desk so I can prepare for the week? And it's just really bad, because people around you will sense you're not really here. Yes, you are here, but you're not really here, and you will have a constant bad consciousness, which is eating you from within. 

And I'm not saying I don't think anybody can do that to perfection but making a profound choice that I actually really try to be here helps. And then I, and then it goes back to my people view, when we sit and do a podcast, one of the things that helped me actually being here, rather than thinking about my next meeting, is to look you in the eyes. So, it's all the little things that help.

Edmund Thomson Jones: I think we also have a lot to learn from two-year-olds.

Mads Nipper: We do. They're very playful and curious.

Edmund Thomson Jones: Their presence is 110% the entire time, and sometimes, you know, insights that arise from that.

Mads Nipper: And at LEGO we always said, and I'm sure they still do, children are our role models.

Edmund Thomson Jones: Amazing. Did that LEGO culture follow you as you moved into the more industrial or less childlike space?

Mads Nipper: Yeah. It, it obviously did. I mean I almost spent a quarter of a century—sounds crazy—in a company with a very distinct culture. So, I’ve no doubt that LEGO will always be with me and most of what I've learned professionally I learned with that company. So yes, it certainly did. And I can still get really excited about building a LEGO set. 

Edmund Thomson Jones: Me too, me too. Mads, thanks for taking the time.

Mads Nipper: It was a pleasure. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. To make sure you don't miss the next conversation, please subscribe to our channel on your preferred podcast app. And if you're listening via LinkedIn or YouTube, why not share this with your connections? Until next time.

About the interviewer

Edmund Thomson Jones (ethomsonjones@heidrick.com) is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ London office and a member of the Private Equity & Venture Capital Practice.