Episode #087: REEL Leadership: Five Leadership Lessons from Jurassic World

I am excited to be a part of a summer 2015 Leadership Lessons from the Movies series along with a number of other bloggers and podcasters I consider friends.
It’s called REEL Leadership. Pretty clever, right? Each of us in the group has agreed to view one of the summer’s big blockbuster films and extract some of our favorite leadership takeaways.

They were kind enough to invite me to view the film Jurassic World. Below, you’ll find some of my leadership takeaways after seeing it last Friday at my local theater.
Below, I’m linking here to the films included in the series thus far, and will update this post as more blog posts and podcast episodes are added throughout the summer.
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Some of the films to be included in the series are:
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Tomorrowland
Mad Max: Fury Road
San Andreas
Jurassic World (the page you’re on right now)
Inside Out
Terminator: Genisys
Minions
Ant-Man
Pan
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
Fantastic Four
I’ll update the list above with the appropriate links as each one releases. Bookmark this page to come back to it easily.
Below, I expound on Five Leadership Lessons from Jurassic Park. Feel free to share your feedback in the comments.
1. Your Customers Want to Be Wowed
You need to ask yourself if you’re creating experiences for them they can’t help but share with their friends? If you can’t definitely say yes in response to that question then you need to take a close, hard look at what you’re doing.
To successfully wow your customers, you have to be willing to continually iterate and improve. In other words, never rest on your laurels.
2. Sometimes You Just Have to Jump
This lesson is directly related to Leadership Lesson #1 above. While wowing your customers is certainly a good thing, sometimes perfectionism can sneak in especially when launching something new. When it does, that can lead often lead to procrastination.
If you’re working on a new project, be willing to ask yourself some tough questions. Yes, you want to wow your customers. But are your attempts at making it perfect really just an excuse not to launch? Make no mistake. It’s tough.
Occasionally, it’s necessary to ship something you may feel is not quite ready for prime time. LinkedIn founder Reed Hastings is noted for saying that if, six months after a launch you look back and aren’t a little embarrassed by it, you probably waited to long to put it out there.
3. Stay Calm
No matter how crazy things get – an irate customer publishes their dissatisfaction on social media, a key vendor goes belly up and you have to start at square one, a newly-created hybrid dinosaur is on the loose in your park – it’s important to keep your wits about you.
And, if you’re in a leadership role,