In a world all hot and panting over organizational team work and collaboration, no team works better than fictional character Danny Ocean’s and his merry band of thieves in Ocean’s 11– Ocean’s13.
10 essential elements of a Danny Ocean team:
- Charismatic leader: Danny Ocean demonstrates commitment, inspiration and a proven record for getting the job done.
- First follower: Brad Pitt’s, Rusty Ryan. Danny and Ryan are the core leaders and management team.
- Funding: In this case a venture capitalist (Reuben Tishkoff) with an emotional reason for the venture. Revenge in this case. Funding source should be willing to take the risk with you.
- Recruiting the team: Hopefully you built strong, trusted relationships. Choose your team with 3 main concerns in mind: availability, ability and trustworthiness. The latter is crucial as we’ve all seen how often after a heist the thieves kill or outsmart each other for the entire loot.
- The plan: A precise, ultra-detailed second by second plan. Have several versions, including plans B to D…maybe all the way to M. Movie thieves are so meticulous!
- The surveillance: Know everything your competition is doing until you can predict your target’s moves.
- Adaptability: be able and willing to change the plan within minutes and begin retraining, obtaining the resources within hours.
- Spontaneous: ability to think quickly on your feet, under extreme stress, including when your wife shows up unexpectedly with another man.
- Instant Communication between members: Another can’t do without element. Like a Bioteam Danny’s group can update and adapt to second by second input and feedback loops.
- Make it look easy.
Art and fiction can teach us much more than we give it credit for. After all life does imitate art more than we care to admit.
Jorge Colón's Blog 