Am I seriously offering leadership lessons from Hollywood’s top cowboy? No. The leadership lessons are from The Quiet Man version of John Wayne.
In The Quiet Man, Wayne plays Sean Thornton, an Irish-American boxer returning to the little village in Ireland he was born in. Thornton is seeking peace and quiet after accidentally killing a man in the ring back in America.
But there are obstacles to the peace and quiet he wants: his neighbor, “Red” Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen) loves to fight and wanted to own the little farm that Thornton buys upon his return, and Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O’Hara) the beautiful, feisty sister of Will. The first time Thornton sees her, well . . . he’s head over heels. She’s keen on him, too, but expects to be wooed in a traditional manner. And if and when there’s a proposal of marriage, Mary Kate expects her brother to pay her dowry and her suitor to accept it happily. Thornton could care less about tradition or her dowry. Her brother has no intention of paying Thornton with anything other than his fists.
In case you didn’t know, pugnacious neighbors and love are major problems when you want peace and quiet. But overcoming obstacles is what leadership is all about. So here are John Wayne/Sean Thornton’s lessons:
1) Stay Focused. Sean wants to return to his roots and live in peace and quiet. No matter how hard “Red” Will Danaher tries to provoke him (even taking a swing at him), he refuses to fight. Fighting would be off-mission. How important is it to stay on-mission? Well, imagine all the pain that would have been spared if TimeWarner hadn’t allowed itself to merge with AOL. The supposed synergies in the merger never developed because the two companies really weren’t compatible. Eventually, TimeWarner rid itself of AOL, which is now an afterthought in the online industry.
2) Be Flexible. Sean falls for Mary Kate. Not exactly part of his Peace & Quiet mission but not necessarily in conflict with it. Of course, in the movie, it is very much in conflict with it, because movies are all about conflict. Sometimes your dream or your plan brings you someplace unexpected – don’t be afraid to go after it. I know, this can be contradictory to Lesson No. 1, but to paraphrase John Wayne’s cowboy persona, “Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” Putting John Wayne and Walt Disney in the same paragraph might seem strange, but Disney took a small but successful animation business and built an entertainment empire by following his dreams and going places no one expected: he created the first animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was a huge success. His later dreams included live action movies, television programs and a theme park like no other: Disneyland. And then what may have been Walt’s ultimate dream: Walt Disney World. Today the Walt Disney Company is a global juggernaut — all because a man and a mouse followed their dreams.
3) Seek Expertise. Sean and Mary Kate court and get married, but Will Danaher refuses to pay the dowry. Sean doesn’t feel it’s worth fighting to get the money, but Mary Kate feels that a man who loves his wife will fight for her dowry – it’s the same as fighting for her. Sean’s completely bewildered and seeks advice from the local priest, who was an amateur boxer in his youth and knows about Thornton’s past in the boxing ring. The priest tells Sean that if he loves Mary Kate, he needs to fight for her — it’s just the way things are. (He also tells Sean not to worry about hurting Will Danaher, who has a jaw like granite.) When the dot-com boom first began, companies like Microsoft needed lots of programming expertise. They needed it fast, and they needed people with the ultimate in current skills and technological experience. They hired folks right out of college and allowed them to work in a corporate setting that was an awful lot like college dorms: music blaring, food & beverages available at all hours, the work day going late into the night. The tech firms sought expertise and then enabled it to do its thing.
4) Slug It Out. Having tried every other way to win Mary Kate’s heart and her dowry, Sean fights Will in one of the screen’s longest and most epic fisticuffs. The battle seems to rage over the Irish countryside and last for hours. And the movie cuts away before the fight ends and gives the viewer only a small hint as to the final victor. But Sean does get the dowry and Mary Kate. Sometimes the only way to compete is head-to-head. Look at all the old-school retailers who’ve taken to matching Amazon’s prices so that people don’t shop the store floors and then order online.
Sometimes, you gotta go punch for punch.
