One of the biggest trends impacting leaders today is the pace of change. Everything is shifting so quickly and we need to adapt like we’re careening through a crowded market in the South of France or heaving hundreds of millions of dollars from a Las Vegas casino into the back of a SWAT van. Adaptation, in short, isn’t just a phenomena from X-Men movies. Movies – particularly Heist movies – give us insights into how we can adapt our careers when challenges are thrown in our way. Here are 9 adaptability lessons from heist movies.
DISCLAIMER: just so we’re clear, the only heist on this list that we condone is probably stealing the Death Star plans in Rogue One.
Ronin
“Whenever there is any doubt, there is no doubt.”
We experience doubt about our work and life all the time. Rarely does it come with the stakes as high as they were for Sam, Vincent, Spence, and Larry under the bridge in Paris when an exchange of cash for guns went horribly wrong. Following his intuition is crucial for Sam and his crew to emerge unscathed from a very shady situation. Later, when they are reflecting on the bullet-laden experience, Vincent asked Sam “how did you know it was a trap?” and Sam summons the phrase above and quips, “that’s the first thing they teach you.”
Sam’s had intuition, sure, and we all do. That said, Sam was trained to assess situations, evaluate the level of risk, mitigate bias, and act accordingly within seconds. In your work and life, when/if you have feelings of doubt, follow your instincts, apply your training, and adapt as quickly as you can.
Heat
“I say what I mean, and I do what I say.“
There is a reason Vincent Hanna is a scary guy when he’s coming after you. Unlike other foes, Hanna doesn’t bullshit. If he tells you not to “waste my motherfucking time!” you better not waste his time. Being direct, clear and following through is important in any situations, particularly quickly evolving ones that involve lots of guns and mayhem. Following through also makes you much more credible, an important asset if you are looking to ensure follow through on an important assignment or project.
Out of Sight
“It’s like seeing someone for the first time, and you look at each other for a few seconds, and there’s this kind of recognition like you both know something. Next moment the person’s gone, and it’s too late to do anything about it.”
Look, I don’t know if Jack Foley and Karen Sisco made it as a couple. What I do know is that their chemistry was unreal and that love – or the possibility of love – is something to which our careers must adapt and adjust. Jack and Karen’s interest in each other played a role in him getting pinched during the Richard Ripley heist – Jack couldn’t resist involving the very talented US Marshall in his scheme because of his feelings for her.
After a decade of coaching and advising students as they explored and chose their careers, I was always a bit troubled by the number of experiences (jobs, internships, study abroad opportunities) that were turned down or the precarious work that was accepted because love disrupted, informed or enlightened their path through life. The point is that love forces us to adapt and can at times blind our choices (or at least heavily bias them in the moment). Hopefully you will be able to pull off your diamond heist and find your partner without going to jail for 10-15 years…
Ocean’s 11, 12, 13 & 8
“Cause the house always wins. Play long enough, you never change the stakes. The house takes you. Unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet big, then you take the house.” & “Do not run a job in a job.”
Trust is probably the most important thing in business. You need it for customer confidence in your technology systems, we expect it from our leaders, and it is so fragile that one shitty person can ruin your team by losing trust. Danny and Debbie Ocean understand the importance of trust. A through-line for all four Ocean’s films is that the highly capable team of thieves trusts each other unequivocally. Even when trust is questioned – like when Danny aligns the heist’s purpose with his desire to get Tess back or when Debbie ensures that the heist implicates her double-crossing ex-boyfriend – it’s done to raise the capability of other players (or haze them just a little), as Danny and Rusty execute to perfection with young Linus.
Psychological safety is the most important ingredient of high performing teams. One of the reasons that Dany and Debbie Ocean can adapt their plans when circumstances change is because they trust their teammates to adapt, too. This makes everything from delegating tasks to problem solving on the fly more manageable and probably more fun.
Layer Cake
“You’re born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you’re up in the rarefied atmosphere and you’ve forgotten what shit even looks like.”
When we start out in life, it’s clear that most of us have to do a lot of order taking. Some of that order taking is frustrating. The boss is telling you to do something that you think is a bad idea. Or, like in Layer Cake, he’s outright stealing from you while he manipulates you to take a fall with the cops. Being able to adapt to different stages in one’s career is crucial to forward momentum and growth. The trick of course is remembering what it was like when you were on the bottom once you get to the “rarified” atmosphere of boss-hood. Don’t let it go to your head, else you may very well end up like X at the end of Layer Cake.
Baby Driver
“Wait, wait, wait! I got to start the song over.”
Baby has habits that make him an incredible and much-covetted getaway driver. His habits, like recording meetings and cutting his boss’s voice into “heist-tracks”, get him into a ton of trouble. However, by approaching his job with a sense of idiosyncratic and monomoniacal routine, he gives himself a strong and stable foundation that allows him to adapt to his surroundings. All he needs to do is follow where the music takes him.
According to Cal Newport, human beings have a finite amount of willpower to spend every day. All the choices we make – what to wear, how to get to work, what meeting to accept, what music to play – use up our willpower and the only way to replenish it is through sleep. Building foundational habits, like Baby does with his heist playlists, helps you divert willpower to the most important tasks in your life, which is why blocking time for thinking, reading and writing is an essential habit that should be built into your work day.
Fast Five
“The only thing that matters right now is the people in this room.”
We were going to laud the importance of family to the Fast films, particularly the safe-wielding heist movie Fast Five, as evidence of how crucial a role trust plays when a team needs to adapt. We kinda covered that with the Ocean’s franchise, so let’s talk about diversity and learning agility for a couple of reasons:
- It’s awesome that the Fast and Furious cast is culturally diverse, which can’t be said of any other Hollywood-born action franchise. The strongest and adaptable teams are the most diverse ones, after all.
- The learning agility of this heist crew is unreal and uncharted – in the first film Dom and his crew are robbing tired long haul truck drivers (and not doing so well at it, either) and by the seventh installment they are parachuting multiple vehicles along “the only road” through the Caucasus region as part of a precision heist against a private army and then flew a car through three skyscrapers. No people in the history of everything have learned so much so well so quickly.
Anyway, pulling a safe through Rio de Janeiro with two cars without getting caught was awesome and ridiculous.
Rogue One
“[HUGE EXPLOSION].”
This Hipster Star Wars midquel (named so because of it’s moment as “the best” film in the franchise…as told by hipsters) uses the heist genre to explain how Luke Skywalker’s shot-through-an-exhaust-valve exploded the first Death Star. Chock full of witty banter, heartstring-pulling relationships, and daring escapes, Rogue One over-delivers because, when the heist of the Death Star plans is complete, the whole crew dies.
Sometimes adapting means accepting a significant loss. Hopefully it’s not death, but it could be a big failure, giving credit to someone else on the team, or acknowledging that unethical behaviour on your team happened on your watch. Jyn, Cassian and the Rogue One crew knew the stakes of their mission and accepted them because they believed in a higher purpose – what are you willing to sacrifice in order to adapt or align your personal purpose with that of your organization and community?
Drive
“You ever heard the story about the scorpion and the frog?”
It’s a great parable and one that I’ve used a few times this year. Haven’t heard it? Check on this link and then watch the Driver tell Gangster Bernie Rose. It really is chilling. Basically, the idea is that sometimes we make terrible choices that go against our own self-interest because of the nature of who we are. In work and life, knowing who you are and your values is the first step to mitigating against this. Understanding where you stand and how you might react to a difficult situation is crucial to adapting appropriately (and perhaps in a different way than you would be inclined).