What businesses can learn from Kevin Smith

I'm quite the devotee of Kevin Smith's films; "Dogma" is one of my favorite movies. It's a brilliant, biting satire of organized religion. I was watching it last week, when a particular line of dialogue resonated with me:

Serendipity: I have issues with anyone who treats faith as a burden instead of a blessing. You people don't celebrate your faith; you mourn it.

Mind you, I've seen this film probably a half-dozen times, and it never occurred to me before; but during this viewing, as I watched Salma Hayek deliver that line, I realized that - with a small twist - this statement could apply to quite a few company leaders I've known over the years:

I have issues with anyone who treats employees as burdens instead of blessings. You people don't celebrate your employees; you mourn them.

How many managers have you met who complain about their employees? Who treat those employees - the very people who are keeping the company in business - as though they were untrustworthy, unreliable children? How many managers behave as though the only reason employees do their jobs is because they're kept on a tight leash?

Lesson: Your employees are the people who keep you in business. They're the ones who are manufacturing the widgets or providing the services your customers buy; in most cases, they're the ones who are communicating with your customers. Treat your employees with the care and respect they deserve if you want them to do the same for your customers.

I began to wonder if there might be anything else in the film that would correlate to life in the corporate world, so I watched it again. As it turns out, there are more parallels than you would think:

Metatron: Human beings have neither the aural nor the psychological capacity to withstand the awesome power of God's true voice. Were you to hear it, your mind would cave in and your heart would explode within your chest.

In the film, no one can speak directly to God; Metatron is the voice of God, and all direct conversation flows through him. I found this to be an interesting parallel to the chain of command that exists in many large corporations: when was the last time you saw the CEO having an actual conversation with one of the widget makers on the manufacturing floor?

Lesson: Spend time with the people who reside in the lower boxes on the org chart - and don't just make a show of it, either. Really listen to them. Those folks may have ideas that can help grow your business; and they'll provide you with a reality check that you just can't get from senior management.

Azrael: No, I was an artist, stupid! I was inspiration! A muse has no place in battle!
Serendipity: So after the fallen were banished to hell, God turned on those who wouldn't fight, and Azrael was sent down with the demons; something he considers a grave injustice.
Azrael: Ah, come on! Don't tell me you never questioned the judgement, Serendipity.
Serendipity: No. It never bothered me. So you were an artist; big deal! Elvis was an artist. But that didn't stop him from joining the service in time of war. And that's why he's The King, and you're a schmuck.

Office politics in the Great Hereafter; you gotta love it. In all seriousness, though, this is a spot-on interpretation of something that happens in businesses every day. There are people who, in a business conflict, flat out refuse to take a position or state an opinion, lest they take the losing side. Instead, these folks wait to see who wins the tug-of-war, and then agree with the victor.

Lesson: If you're in a leadership position, one of the things you're expected to do is use your brain; if you refuse to express what you really think, then you're not doing your job. Sure, sometimes you'll make a bad call, but that's to be expected. Failing to take a position in any conflict doesn't make you seem neutral; it makes you seem wimpy. Don't be that guy, because no one respects him.

Bethany: You're saying that having beliefs is a bad thing?
Rufus: I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant.

I don't even need to interpret this, do I? It's applicable to business without any translation.

Lesson: Holding tightly to beliefs about your market, your customers, or your employees limits your ability to navigate and effect change in the workplace. Beliefs can become outdated; ideas by their very nature are limitless. Don't let your beliefs get in the way of new ideas.

Bethany: But you'll be destroyed too!
Azrael: Have you ever been to hell? I'd rather not exist than endure that experience a second longer, and if I have to drag down everyone else with me... so be it.

Misery so loves company, yes? And human nature is such that everyone thinks that their problems are more important than everyone else's. Take human nature and add a few splashes of narcissism, and you have a recipe for people who will bring down the entire company if it will get them where they want to be.

Lesson: If you're miserable in your organization, then do what you can do to fix it. If you can't fix it, then leave. But don't take out other people in your quest for revenge against whatever slights you think you've experienced. It's unprofessional, and it won't make you feel better. Furthermore, even big business is smaller than you'd think, and people talk. Trust me when I tell you that you don't want a reputation as someone who will sacrifice other folks for your success.

Bartleby: We've paid our debt. Don't you think it's time... Don't you think it's time we went home? And to do that... I... I think we may have to dispatch our would be dispatchers.
Loki: Wait. Wait. Wait. Kill them? You're talking about the Last Scion...! And what about Jay and Bob? I mean... Those guys were all right.
Bartleby: Don't. Don't my friend. See, don't let your sympathies get the best of you. They did me once. Scion or not, she's just a human. And by passing through that arch, our sins are forgiven. No harm, no foul.

Ah, yes; the ever-popular loophole. This is the slippery slope of business (indeed, of life): any action is okay if you can find a loophole by which the act isn't against the rules (or if you can rationalize that it's justified).

Lesson: Loopholes are bull$#|^. If you have to ask yourself whether what you're doing is ethical, or if you have to find a way to justify doing something that's iffy on the scale of right-and-wrong, then the odds are that it's not ethical. And I hope I don't need to remind you of this, but I will anyway: just because a given act isn't illegal doesn't necessarily mean that it's right. Sure, sometimes doing what's right can hurt you (in the short term); but getting a reputation as someone who takes ethically-questionable shortcuts will hurt you far more in the long term.

Metatron: So once he's done with the firstborn, Loki takes his friend Bartleby out for a post-slaughter drink. And over many rounds, they get into this discussion about whether or not murder in the name of God is okay. Now, Bartleby can run circles around Loki intellectually, not to mention that Loki's already half in the bag. And in the end, Bartleby convinces Loki to quit his position and take a lesser one that doesn't involve slaughter. So - very inebriated - Loki tells God he quits, throws down his fiery sword, and gives Him the finger. Which ruins it for the rest of us, because from that day forward, God decreed that all angels could no longer imbibe alcohol. Hence all the spitting.

Once again, we have a spot-on interpretation of a situation that occurs all too frequently in businesses: you have one person who does something really foolish, and the business responds by creating a new policy that punishes everyone for the misdeeds of one.

Lesson: Take the time to identify personnel problems vs. process problems, and then address them accordingly. If you have one person who continually causes a problem, then you have a personnel issue; the solution is to deal with that one person. If, on the other hand, you have a number of people who are making the same mistakes, then you don't have a personnel problem: you have a process, training, or management problem. In the latter situation, then a new policy might be the answer (but you can't know that until you take the time to do a root cause analysis to see what's really driving the problem).

Bethany: You're going to lead me somewhere.
Jay: Me lead you?! Lady, look at me: I don't even know where the hell I am half the time!

No matter what you do, there will always be some employees who will think that company leaders don't know where the hell they are half the time. But that doesn't mean that you should behave in a manner consistent with that belief.

Lesson: If you don't know how to lead people, then it's your responsibility to learn. Read books, network with people you admire so that you can pick their brains, and talk to your employees. You can't go wrong by asking folks what you can do to help them be more effective. You can't go wrong by praising in public and coaching in private (you do already know that you should never chew someone out in public, don't you?). You can't go wrong by admitting that you don't always have all the answers; but you can go seriously wrong by pretending that you do.

Managing people isn't religion - and managers aren't deities. Don't make your employees go through intermediaries to talk to you; be available, be honest, do the right thing, and treat everyone with respect (even - especially - the people you don't particularly like). Be willing to admit that you don't know it all, and be open to new ideas from every level of the organization. Don't let your beliefs about how businesses should be run (or how managers should behave) get in the way of being effective. Trust your instincts, and trust your employees. Do those things, and you'll find that people will perform better than you'd ever dreamed.