I've been in NYC now for a week - what a city.
(There's no way anyone could have known, but I set this in to motion about 30 years ago when for my tap dance "end-of-the-year" production I created an event around a song that started, "Start spreadin' the news..." And, now that I've been working here for so long, I know, "If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere!)
So, last Friday I reached out to a friend of mine here and said, "Let's go see Moneyball."
It was very different than most of the movies I've been around lately (mostly on airplanes and in hotels). It was a "thinker" movie. Some of my takeaways.
Performance means making difficult choices.
Throughout the movie, the Billy Beane character demonstrates the need to make difficult choices. It's business to him. The ability to combine fact with intuition leads him to focus continually on the issue at hand. The net effect is to make a "performance-based" decision and then move on to the next thing.
Agree on what the problem (really) is.
My favorite scene (and surely one that I will watch again and again) happens in the office, with several people in a deep discussion around a conference table. Billy "strongly suggests" that no one but him understands the "REAL problem." My take-away, as I head in to another month of leadership discussions in three different countries (!!!) is to spend precious time and significant mindshare agreeing on what the problem is / problems are that people are facing.
Surround yourself around the best.
Love the scene where he hires the "economics major from Yale." This goes line-by-line with my own philosophy of asking for what you want. Just today, I wrote letters to two people here in New York City who I have followed over the years, who have influenced me greatly, inviting them to coffee later this month when I return. We'll see what happens!
Question tradition.
"If you always do what you've always done..." I know it's a popular cliche, but boy is it true. Over and over again, Billy sets the people around him to ask the question, "Is what we've done the best we could do?"