Leadership

Business is a competitive sport. Sometimes it can get bloody. Sometimes it should.

So it’s no wonder that quotes from great works such as Sun Tzu’s the Art of War are often worked into insightful business ideologies. The movie 300 carries many great lessons that can be applied to business. Especially in the area of leadership.

About Frank Miller

Frank Miller is an amazing writer. He has written some of the most influential graphic novels in the medium. I’ve always been a big fan. If it’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words, it’s also true that one of Frank Miller’s words is worth a thousand pictures. It’s great to see his work (Sin City, 300) on film.

300 is based on historical events. A small force of Spartans held off the massive Persian army at the battle of Thermopylae until help could arrive.

The Lessons Of 300

The original graphic novel is broken into 5 chapters. Here they are with the wisdoms they bear:

1. Honor. There’s a big difference between ethics and integrity. Know the difference. Be open. Take the high road.
2. Duty. Not everyone practices honor. Know when it’s time to cut integrity loose and get ethical.
3. Glory. Celebrate your successes to build momentum. Capitalize on your successes to create more of them.
4. Combat. Stand in front of your army and you’ll always have an army behind you.
5. Victory. Sweet isn’t it. Now go back to number 1 and do it all over again.

As a leader, you don’t always have to have the best idea. But you do have to recognize the best idea. And then you have to make the decision to go with that idea.

Some decisions are easy. Others … not so much.

Is The Juice Worth The Squeeze

There is a funny comedy called The Girl Next Door starring Emile Hirsch and Elisha Cuthbert. It’s a zany story about a high school guy who’s trying to win a scholarship. He always plays it safe and never does anything wild. Everything he does is to push towards his goal of a career in politics, so he keeps his world really buttoned up.

And then he falls for the new girl that’s just moved in next door. The catch is … she used to be a porn star. He lets loose, gets himself into deep waters, and around every turn he’s forced to make big decisions that could affect his future.

The theme (and a line in the movie) is this: Is the juice worth the squeeze? It’s a great line to think of when you’re under pressure and you have to force yourself to stop cold so you can weigh the consequences of your decisions.

The Juice, The Squeeze, And Making A Decision

You’re under pressure, people and situations are coming at you a hundred miles an hour from all directions and everyone is looking at you to make the call. The best thing to do is STOP.

• Stop
• Think
• Observe
• Plan

Maybe you’ve got 3 weeks to do this. And maybe you only have 3 seconds. S.T.O.P. is an acronym used in wilderness training to offset panic and teach people how to deal with unexpected situations. It works in the concrete jungle too. Clear minds always prevail.

Stop

You can make split-second decisions when your experience or your gut tells you it’s the right move. If you’re not sure though, and you try to force a big decision then you usually have a 50/50 chance of being right. Probably less than that because neither of your initial options might be the best. The best decision might be one that goes in a totally different direction.

Think

Explore your options. Look beyond what is right in front of you. Maybe there’s a creative solution that makes this not such a difficult decision after all.

Once you know your options, it’s time to weigh them. This is where you figure out if the juice is worth the squeeze. List the good points and the bad points. Factor in the short term and the long term repercussions. See what or who else you can bring in to turn some of the bad points into good ones.

Observe

By this time you should find yourself leaning towards a particular decision. Test it. Bounce it off the wall. Roll it around. Look and see if there’s anything you’ve missed. Look into the future and really be honest about what might or might not happen if you make this decision the way you think you’re going to make it.

Plan

It’s time to make your executive decision. But it isn’t a simple decision and you have to make sure it’s executed properly to take advantage of the good points and skirt around the pitfalls.

If there are other people involved, make sure everyone knows what to do and why it has to be done a certain way. Outline the steps to be taken. Ensure that everyone is aware of the pitfalls and that they know the goals they need to reach.

After The Dust Settles

Good decisions pay off. You know when you’ve made one. Everyone knows it. No matter how hard they are to make at the time, as long as you stop, and ask, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”, the outcome after a good decision will always tell you …

“You’re damn right it is”.

A General who stands in front of his army will always have an army behind him.

Alexander The Great knew that. He built an empire on it. Good politicians put in a solid days work on a Habitat for Humanity house. Lousy ones get their pictures taken holding a hammer.

When it comes to motivating your people, nothing does it better than standing in the trenches with them when they really need you.

Dig In And Get Dirty

I had a production crew that was used to running automated equipment. That’s what they did. It’s what they knew, and they were a good crew. One day I put them on a job to dig a trench so we could lay some piping. It was summer. It was hot. Nobody was really excited about it, but that was the task at hand.

After about an hour, I went out to see how things were going and things were going miserably. They had barely made a dent in the ground. The supervisor I had working for me was an inexperienced leader and he sometimes had trouble getting the best work out of his crew. At the rate they were going this job was going to take them 2 or 3 days easily.

It’s nice to get away from driving a desk every once in awhile. And it was clear that some serious motivation was needed here. I took the guy who was working the hardest (the supervisor) and gave him a break. I told him to go pick up some cold bottled water for everyone. I grabbed his shovel and started digging.

This kind of stunned everyone for a minute … to have the “big boss” digging a ditch with them. The dirt started flying. I worked with them for about 40 minutes and then I bowed out and handed the project back to the supervisor with some words of encouragement for everyone.

The job was done in about 4 hours.

Know Your Priorities

Did I have other things to do other than digging holes? Yes.

Did I have more important things to do? Absolutely not.

People are a company’s greatest asset. You can’t build a great company without great people. And even though it’s often difficult to find great people, with motivation and leadership you can turn good people into a great team.

As a leader, it’s important to spend time building that great team. It’s more important than a lot of other things you have to do because a great team can and will help you get those other things done. Motivation carries through to other things; production was smoother and more efficient after that day because this crew had been in the trenches together and they had become a better team. A great team.

Stand in front of your army. They’ll be right there behind you.

I can’t think of a better story to start off the Leadership category for Zoomstart than this.

Most people will agree; there’s a certain amount of leadership that you’re born with, and a certain amount you learn.

Of the part you learn, a very important part is learned when you’re young. These are the lessons that become very formative to your character. They become a part of you more than the lessons that you learn later on do.

I’ve had the good fortune to work with some really great business people with amazing leadership skills. They’ve taught me a lot. But by far, the most important thing about leadership I ever learned, I learned from my Grandfather when I was 10.

What Happened

When I was about 10 years old, my grandparents took me on a little fishing trip up to a small lake in the hills around the Okanagan Valley. We rented a rowboat. My Grandfather didn’t get to fish because he had to row. So my Grandmother and I were trolling off the back of the boat as we circled around the small lake.

It was a beautiful day for the first hour and a half. And then, as we were out at the far end of the lake, the clouds rolled in and the wind came up suddenly. In fifteen minutes we went from calm blue skies to rain, wind and waves.

The waves were knocking our little rowboat all over the place and we were far from any place we could get ashore. I was worried. My Grandmother was worried. My Grandfather was rather calm and in good spirits. He’d say things like “The fish love weather like this“.

At one point it got so bad that the waves were coming into the boat and were pushing us sideways into the dead logs that floated all along the side of the lake. My Grandfather was still calm. He’d say “This isn’t too bad. Seen a lot worse weather than this“. and “We might as well call it a day“. He had been rowing towards the beach this whole time.

Every time we started to get really worried he calmly reassured us that everything was going to be fine. He was so calm, you just had to believe it was true.

The Lesson

Several months later at a big family gathering, my Grandfather was telling the story about our little adventure on the lake that day. I stopped cold when he said “I was more than a little worried out there“.

He was worried. He never showed it.

That’s how I learned that when the fit hits the shan, the person that stays calm and cool is the leader.

To this day, when I face a truly sudden, unexpected and bad situation, it barely gets a reaction out of me. I just figure out what I need to do and do it.