Business Life Lessons Learned From the Movies

"Business Life Lessons Learned From the Movies"
Following essay was posted to monthly magazine "Staff Adviser " home page.
http://www.staffad.com/bilingual/shinbori/shinbori05_en.html

Business Life Lessons Learned From the Movies

●Movies featuring business situations are enjoyable:
I may be someone who watches a large number of movies compared to other people of my generation.
I count the number of movies I watch in the theater in a year. Last year, it was 43. Two years ago, it was 47.
I like action and romance films.
I also like movies featuring business enterprises.
It is a very useful reference for me in my work to watch scenes from movies representing the way business negotiations are carried out, the way meetings are held and conversations between those in senior positions and their subordinates.

Movies featuring business enterprises provide me with fresh material from which I can learn about American society.

Movies that particularly impressed me were: “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “The Informant!” and “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.”

 ●Movies featuring corporate downsizing:

I watched a movie on DVD this New Year’s holiday.
It was “Up in the Air”, which was released two years ago.
The movie deals with corporate downsizing.
A handsome George Clooney acts as someone who fires people on behalf of other companies.
He is contracted by companies to travel all over the United States by airplane and tell a person that he or she no longer has a job.
His goal is to reach ten million frequent flyer miles.

Dismissing employees is originally the job of the employee’s boss or the personnel manager.

But they outsource this nasty and unpleasant job to outside the company.
Aggressively taking full advantage of outsourcing is a typical element of American management.

 The employee who has been told they no longer have a job trembles with anger.

Even though they want to explode in anger, they can't release their frustrations because the person in front of them is just a contracted employee.

 Outsourcing downsizing tasks to outside the company is a great convenience for the boss of employees to be dismissed and personnel managers because they can dismiss someone without getting their hands dirty.

●Dismissing someone and being dismissed:

Dismissing someone when a company is downsizing causes great pain to those being dismissed. At the same time, the act of dismissing someone is also usually a very difficult thing to do.

15 years ago, I was suddenly dismissed.

Moreover, on the following day, I switched roles and found myself having to dismiss other employees.
At that time, the dot-com bubble had almost completely collapsed.
I was the head of a venture company (R Corporation), which had its head office in Silicon Valley in the U.S.
The business in Japan began well by successfully securing a sales alliance contract with a major advertisement agency (D Corporation)

Without any advanced notice, the VP from the U.S. HQ showed up at the Tokyo office.

He told me that:
"Our company will be liquidated by the end of next month. Because the planned capital increase fell through the company’s cash reserves have almost run out. Consequently, the business cannot continue in this state."

 “The U.S. HQ will be liquidated” meant that the Tokyo office would be shut down. That is to say, I myself was to be dismissed. This sudden news upset me very much.

 The liquidation of the Tokyo office didn’t just mean my dismissal, but also the dismissal of the 26 employees in the Tokyo office.

One of my roles as the head of the Tokyo office was to tell the employees that our office is being closed and that all of you will be fired by the end of the next month.”

I immediately met with an attorney and discussed how I should proceed.

Both employees and I went through a very hard and bitter experience.

However the liquidation process was somehow completed by the given period.
Even now I can’t forget this painful incident.

●Movies are packed full of life:

In the movie “Up in the Air”, there is a scene where George Clooney makes a speech in front of an audience of people who were fired. He asks the audience: “What’s In Your Backpack?”
By comparing life to a backpack, he asks “what are you packing into your backpack?” in his speech.
The title of this movie, “Up in the Air,” refers to an idiom that means “not yet decided” or “no idea at all.”

The movie provides us with the opportunity to reflect on our own lives. The movie includes a cast featuring various people that act out many different lives.

We are now living in chaotic times, searching for the direction we should be headed
Someday, we may discover this direction through the people or the events that appear in the movies.
I am going to continue to watch movies as before with an inquisitive mind, always looking to learn new things.