What can we learn from The Walk, the movie?

I bet as business students, Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs incessantly comes forth. For many, the theory defines life’s guiding patterns and values shaping human ambitions and directing their actions while others – limited in number but larger in impact – challenge the indispensable principle and follow their intuition; i.e. for them hierarchy goes the other way. They believe in making the dream come true, everything else will become true. Their dreams are not characterized by what is accepted by people but what the life offers, not by what is legal or ferocious; not how hard they fall but how hard they keep stumbling to Greatness, fearlessly, insanely and decisively_ they truly are meant for Greatness. Take the examples of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Ma or Tony Fernandez of Air Asia. They were barely influenced by predominant pattern of life and changed the course of life for themselves and million others around the world.

I am very particular about movie preferences. I watch for inspiration not mere entertainment, which largely depends on profound essence of the movies granting the intrinsic takeaway to the audience. The Walk is a biopic based on Philippe Petit, a French High-Wire artist’s adventure to walk between Twin Towers of World Trade Centre on 6th August 1974. This was not an easy task but surely possible, which you should – I highly recommend – find yourselves. The movies offers the following lessons to entrepreneurs in particular and business students in general:

1. Set Clear Vision

Philippe never dreamt of becoming an artist performing on the streets but a great artist, the world would always remember. Thereof, he set his vision for a historic walk on the Twin Towers of New York. His vision was clear and specific. These virtues programmed his brain, preparation and every single move to making it happen. The result was magical and eternal for those who watched him walk back then. When Louis V. Gerstner was announced to become the CEO of IBM in 1993, rumours reverberated about descent of a corporation which was drastically losing market share and company value. The Wall Street Journal and the Economist made clear statements that IBM will never regain control of rapidly changing industry let alone prevailing as a corporation. In his book, “Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance”, Gerstner writes his deepest goal was to create a task force of change agents who believed they had the ability to determine their fate. In an occasion he told IBMers, “change comes from anger about what our competitors are saying and doing to us in the market. They come into our houses and take our children and grandchildren’s college money.  We’ve got to go out and start winning and we are going to do it together.” Gerstner said the last thing IBM needed was a vision not to survive but prevail. The power of clear and specific vision will transform business ethics and execution of activities, so champion the power of clarity.

2. Be Persistent

(Dialogue from a movie)

Annie:You don’t give up, do you?

Philippe:No, I am very persistent.

Throughout the movie, Philippe reminds that persistence is derived from passion to making our dream come true. This guides our actions no matter how insane they sound and guts they require. As long as the vision is clear, every action becomes a step closer to ultimate glory. In his book, “Losing my Virginity”, Richard Branson writes crossing Atlantic by boat would promote the Virgin Atlantic targeting London and New York as new destinations. Despite heavy storms and problems in fuel system, he managed to cross the Atlantic in 3 days, 8 hours and 31 minutes beating Blue Riband record by 2 hours and 9 minutes. He writes how people would imply living his happy-millionaire life than doing some mad sky-diving, hot-air-ballooning or crossing the Atlantic by boat. But for Branson, the breath-taking adventures laid foundation for success the corporation is reaping now. Unexpected events, accidents and naysayers always come our way. There is no ideal day philosophy in business. Every accomplishment comes along with yet another challenge, another target. Be persistent because the same naysayers may join those cheering on your success.

3. Build a Team, aha, Right Team

The end of everything is start to something new and probably great. Philippe was kicked out by his father for fooling around and not making reputable livelihood. Little did his father know the world history embraced a hero by closing his house door. Call it charisma or fortune, resourceful people came Philippe’s way, who initially got along well mesmerized by his ambition – rather insanity. Let’s be realistic, in business world building team is the most hectic but critical factor. People spend a lot of time developing great ideas than developing great team. You may have the genius idea (s) but a team of wrong and negative people will either fail you or deftly resist to the genius idea (s) only to leave you feel infuriated. In the worst scenario, you confess the idea was BAD and change the course. Louis Gerstner wrote in his book that during early days of his tenure in IBM, he came across a vocabulary common to IMBers, “pushback”. He says employees would resist change which were against their interests or fight decisions treating them as mere suggestions. His mission was to build team of leaders working as change agents. Thus, Senior Leadership Group (SLG) was formed with members would range from software engineer to senior executive for whom a set of IBM Leadership Competencies were formalized. The idea was these leaders would be driving force of change.

As long as you have right people in your team, your idea will yield genius results, so make sure to dedicate time in building right people and getting rid of wrong ones.

4. Grow Empathy

During August 2015, the electronic and print media was infiltrated with hype on who the next CEO of Google would be. The whole debate on smartness as pivotal criteria was shunned as soon as Sundar Pichai’s name emerged. There must have been ideally smarter IT folks but for Larry Page, Sundar Pichai’s soft skills: making sure everyone understands company vision, building cooperation by dealing the conflicts and showing empathy with every single employee made him the ideal choice. This cannot be a single example that not only does empathy create egalitarian environment but also add value to work ethics and business profit cycle. Jack Welch is known to the business world, who promoted a culture of learning within General Electric (GE) culture during his tenure. He launched “reverse mentoring” program to help older employees learn how to use the Internet from younger employees. He had his own mentor to make sure he practiced what he preached (What the Best CEOs Know, pp.84-85). This signifies how humane part of leaders streamline reality of vision through examples.

In the Walk, Philippe’s personality is characterized by egotism and arrogance, who would expect people to appreciate him for his art. Along the way, his tutor Papa Rudy, his girlfriend (Annie) and friends (who he called accomplices) made him realize people connect with art only if artists truly appreciate those recognizing their art. And that comes from being empathetic. He later admits it was their (tutor and friends) support he managed to endeavour to historic success.     

Coming back to the point of Great People I would refer to a statement outlined by Tony Fernandez during Global Transformation Forum 2015, Malaysia which I attended in person. To a question on how government and private sector can work together to transform businesses he said, “It is all about embracing change. Today business culture has changed so the question is do you want to change and do you have the willingness to change?” It is evident ideas believed to have been genius may not be effective today and today’s ideas may not work tomorrow. Therefore, businesses need to accept the realities taking place around them. Appreciate the change and adopt the transition to greatness by working around the clock.

References:

Louis V. Gersnner, Jr. 2002, ‘Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?’, Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround, Harper Collins Publisher, Hammersmith, London

Richard Branson, 2004, ‘Losing my Virginity’, Three Rivers Press, New York

Jeffrey A. Krames, 2003, ‘What the Best CEOs Know’, 7 Exceptional Leaders and their Lessons for Transforming any Business, R.R. Donnelley, Mc.Graw-Hill, New York