WonderTour

Welcome to Lead Wisely by Wondertour, episode 114.

Last week and this week, we are talking about the classic action movie Die Hard, but we're
on our villains series.

And so for leadership lessons, we're actually talking about the antagonists.

In this case, the classic Alan Rickman villain, Hans Gruber, who is the head of a group of
what appear to be terrorists, but turn out to be thieves who are after a very large amount

In this case, the classic Alan Rickman villain, Hans Gruber, who is the head of a group of
what appear to be terrorists, but turn out to be thieves who are after a very large amount

of money.

interrupted rudely by a superhero in the form of Bruce Willis' John McLean.

So last time we talked about Hans Gruber's leadership characteristics and why he turns out
to be a really remarkably effective and skilled leader.

He makes a good plan.

He surrounds himself with a diverse team.

He seems like he's got everything figured out.

So let's start with a tough question about leadership.

Why doesn't Hans win?

Why is Hans Gruber not successful in Die Hard?

Drew, what do you got?

So right from the beginning, when Hans comes in, we're immediately wowed by the capability
of execution that the team has.

They're just ruthless in how they come in.

They have this staged conversation as a distraction.

They immediately take out the guard.

And then from there, it's just every person is playing their part in executing on this
plan.

And they just keep getting further and further and further ahead.

of the hostages, initially of McLean and eventually of the police.

And it's this buildup of advantage that you get by, as we talked about in the last
episode, doing a really good job of looking over the hill and explaining what we need to

do to the team, breaking it down.

And that's what makes Hans great.

He's able to do that.

He's able to empower the team to execute on that.

And now where I see him failing is he fails to adjust his priors fast enough.

But when I say adjust your priors, what I mean is we come into a situation, especially if
we have a plan with an assumption about how things should work.

We assume that this person is going to be competent to execute this mission.

We assume that the

we'll be able to buy money at this rate or something like that, right?

And if that assumption starts to change, we need to do something that we call adjusting
our priors.

It's Bayesian thinking.

It means that as the facts change, I change my mind, as John Maynard Keynes said.

And that's where we maybe see this brilliant Hans Gruber fail is he doesn't change his
mind fast enough about John McLean.

He has this threat that comes in

and he doesn't respond to it necessarily quick enough until we reach a point where he's
already now lost almost all of the advantage, all that proactivity he built in, it has

eroded and now John starts to have the upper hand on him.

Hmm, that's really good.

And I like that because I think, yeah, I like what you said there that we do this, right?

As we make this, we make the perfect plan to succeed based on the facts that are available
to us when we're making the plan.

But in most situations, we have competitors or we have other actors and they're not
necessarily going to cooperate, right?

They're going to see what we've done and they're going to react to us and they're going to
try to counter our actions.

And you have to, you can't...

You can't plan all of the potential risk management there, right?

You can't have a detailed plan for exactly how to handle those things.

You have to be willing to just see what happens in the world and then, you know, keep the
big picture in mind, but sort of adjust as you go.

And so, yeah, I think the thing that Hans doesn't do well in this, or the reason he
doesn't succeed in this one is because he's up against an opponent who is far more capable

than he realizes at the start.

Right?

You he thinks he's got everybody hemmed in as hostages and it turns out there's one person
who got away.

And it turned out the one person who got away also has a gun and also happens to be highly
physically skilled and also is incredibly stubborn and also has superhuman pain tolerance

and creativity.

Like it's kind of an unreasonable thing to run into, but we definitely, right.

realistic part of it, right?

Is he's doing this for his wife because she's one of the hostages he's captured.

Not only, but that's his main motivation.

right.

Well, that's good.

And that's from our, leadership things that we talk about, right too, is that, you know,
one of Hans's weaknesses is he's not a magnanimous leader.

Like he's not the whole thing that he's trying to accomplish in the world is not, you
know, for the benefit of others, right?

It's basically for his own benefit and he's dropped his entire moral compass to get there.

And so he doesn't have, and he and his team don't have quite the same level of commitment
than the, need to save my wife's life and I need to save my own life, hero that we've got

on the other side of the table here.

Right?

So recognizing that where the, you know, where if you're an existential threat to
somebody, if you're an existential threat to some other organization, they're going to do

So recognizing that where the, you know, where if you're an existential threat to
somebody, if you're an existential threat to some other organization, they're going to do

dramatic things to try to, to try to get away.

Right?

They're going to do dramatic things to try to counter you.

Sure, sure, and we'll get into kind of what do you do to avoid that here in a second, but
I want to talk a little bit about one more thing about Hans.

Hans is cool and collected the entire time.

That's what sticks out to me the most from the first time that you meet him, because
you're kind of waiting to see, who's the leader of these baddies who are able to execute

so efficiently?

And then you see Hans and it makes sense because he's just totally cool all the time.

But the problem is

when you're cool all the time and I'm just hypothesizing but like is the reason that he's
cool all the time because he has completely soothed out any moral obligation that he has

because it's easy to be extremely calculating and relaxed when you have a plan you're
executing that plan and any variations you're just going to silence you're not worried

about what happens if you have to shoot the hostages because you'll just do it.

Hmm.

Okay.

Let's leave that as a cliffhanger and do the intro.

So I'm Brian Nutwell and we are on a journey to learn how to lead wisely, learn how to
become better leaders by touring fantastic worlds and inspiring lore by going on a wonder

tour.

We connect leadership concepts to story contexts because it sticks to our brains better.

You can find out more at wondertourpodcast .com or on YouTube by looking up Lead Wisely.

So yeah, Hans, you're right.

He is part of his charm, part of his invincible aura is that he's incredibly calm.

He's like, this is not a big deal.

I plan for this.

The police are here because I wanted them here.

The FBI is here because I wanted them here.

The hostages are freaking out.

We had to shoot the guy because I knew we were going to have to shoot the guy.

He's projecting that everything is under control all the time, which is really powerful
for the team.

It's really powerful for his opponents.

Like, man, we're not even, you know, we're not even.

of arming him at all.

must really have his stuff together.

He must be really, really powerful.

Right?

So that you're right.

That's it's a very strong message, but also at some point, maybe he's not taking, he's
actually internally not taking things seriously enough.

Like it takes him quite a long time in this movie to actually get angry, even when things
are starting to go pretty bad.

And maybe he should have taken things seriously earlier on.

Maybe because what does he get beat by?

He gets beat by a dude who's even more cool and calm than he is.

mean, John McClane, as much as he gets emotional, he gets that desire and motivation
building up inside of him.

John is able to handle each of these situations that he had no idea that he's going to
Nakatomi Plaza and he shows up and then he's not prepared for the situation.

And yet he's just building up this demeanor until you get to the end.

where he's got the gun to his head and he's just laughing, right?

He's like, come on, I'm sitting here over and over again, you keep coming at me, you've
absolutely destroyed my physical body, what more could you possibly do to me at this

point?

And he's just laughing because he's like, now finally, I'm one step ahead of you.

Right.

Yeah, this is, mean, from a storytelling standpoint, it's a great inversion where you
start with Hans is incredibly competent and has a very detailed plan.

And John McClane is an emotional disaster who's dealing with his ex -wife and doesn't even
want to be at this party and is just kind of freaking out about everything.

And then over the course of the movie, they kind of cross where Hans ends up sort of very
reactive and very angry and very scared and kind of desperate.

And John McClane is stepping his way up increasingly successful and increasingly like,
okay, I'm going to figure this out.

this out.

And he has a lot of desperate moments in the course there.

He's spending a lot of time being scared and reactive, but he's getting progressively more
on top of the situation.

Yeah, there's something to it that the, like the water's inside of him, right?

Yeah, there's something to it that the, like the water's inside of him, right?

It seems like on the outside he's just a cool glass of water, Hans that is.

But inside of him there's some turmoil, there's something that's driving him and I'm
always wary when I see somebody who's that calm that...

You know, in a moment you can see somebody and have them be that calm, but like, what is
driving that calmness?

Because if what is driving that calmness is a suppression of morality, it's a suppression
of a feeling of what should be right that drives the strife inside of us, that makes it

Because if what is driving that calmness is a suppression of morality, it's a suppression
of a feeling of what should be right that drives the strife inside of us, that makes it

hard to be calm for some of us sometimes, then that's not a good thing.

if the calmness comes from, the calmness can come from other things, that's okay.

But I think for Hans,

He has this illusion of calmness that eventually just, like you said, unravels over the
course of the movie because he doesn't have a higher purpose.

He doesn't have anything to hold onto as everything starts to fall apart where obviously
John does.

He's actually doing it for a magnanimous reason.

Yeah, yeah.

And so Hans has got people around him to be angry.

But yeah, even when even when his first team member gets killed, ever his concern is not
like I'm really upset.

His concern is like, Carl's going to be upset that his brother's killed.

So I got to manage that.

Like he's very much in a, you know, manage the exceptions, you know, message that
everything is fine mode.

But it's not clear that he really cares about anything or any of these people at all.

Like he's he's very cold.

And that's a that's a failure mode until he gets until he gets angry at the end.

But it's angry on his own behalf.

It's not angry on,

at some, some injustice.

It's just like, he's just pissed.

He's not going to get the money.

Yeah, he's just angry that his will is thwarted, which is the natural progression of anger
as we've talked about.

Yes.

Okay, so let's transition to the mountaintop then.

do we see here?

Where's the scene in the movie where we really see this inversion happening, where we're
gonna see Hans sort of starting to lose control of the situation.

Yeah, so when we build up to the climax, I would say this is not at the climax, but this
is kind of like the early peak.

A lot of movies have that like preview of the climax.

This is kind of it where we get McClane moving from reactive to proactive.

And the way that he does that is obviously he's already completely beaten up by this point
in the movie.

He's been running away for a long time after they find him and he can't help himself
except constantly be yelling loud expletives and stuff like that that are giving him away.

to the terrorists or the thieves.

And so he's been beaten down, he's getting chased through the elevator shaft and stuff
like that at this point.

And finally, he realizes that if he keeps staying on the defensive and all he does is just
wait and try to learn information and kind of play this cat and mouse game over the radio,

that's not going to be enough, that Hans is always one step ahead of him.

And so he has to do something completely different now.

And what he does on the flip side is

he takes some plastic explosives that they had planned for their purposes and instead he
dumps them down the elevator shaft which creates a complete inversion of the plan

originally.

He basically does a thing that they had thought of doing for them.

And in doing so, now their perfect plan cannot be executed anymore.

Yeah, so he takes the initiative, is, know, which is, which is, you said, that's the first
point where you really see him sort of being proactive.

Yeah, so he takes the initiative, is, know, which is, which is, you said, that's the first
point where you really see him sort of being proactive.

He's using their own stuff against them.

He takes a couple of bad guys.

He's doing this because he's just observed that they're, you know, that the police aren't
going to get it done, right?

The police are just walking into the narrative and just sort of, you know, they're,
they're playing Hans's game and getting beat at it.

So, but what that does is that suddenly.

you know, suddenly the bad guys plans, suddenly Hans' plan is completely off the rails.

Like now he's really not in control of how things are going anymore, where that's his
entire shtick is I'm in control.

I have the detailed plan and all that.

And so it kind of gets increasingly like he's and he doesn't freak out.

He gets upset, but he doesn't freak out.

He's like, OK, well, we're going to solve this.

You do this.

You do this.

I'm going to go over here.

We need to get that.

Right.

You know, so he's he's still sort of running his own playbook and it still looks
relatively competent.

But like you said, he's shifted from being proactive to reactive.

And he never really, from this point in the movie onwards, he never really zooms out
again.

He's never really like trying to think several steps ahead.

He's always looking one step ahead and trying to react to the new thing that just
happened.

And we've all been there, right?

When you get in that mode, when your plan falls apart and all you're doing is just trying
to put out fires.

Like if you don't take the time to start thinking about like, isn't the plan working?

Do we need a new plan?

Is the big picture.

even possible anymore.

If you don't ever question that, then you just get deeper and deeper into the hole.

Yeah, that's the key here.

What's our takeaway from this mountaintop?

It's the inversion and the inversion is always something that we're looking for because it
points out something significant in the story is happening.

And for us here, you're talking about an inversion from being proactive to being reactive.

And on the flip side, it's McLean is becoming proactive from reactive.

And how do we apply this to business?

How do we apply this to

like trying to figure out our relationships or whatever it is.

Anytime I think we find ourselves in a moment of questioning, questioning, you know, is my
plan still good enough?

We talked about, we need to be Bayesian.

When the facts change, I change my mind.

But you don't want to adjust your priors too soon and be wrong.

You don't want to adjust the plan needlessly.

So how do you know when the right time to adjust the plan is?

And I think Brian,

What you've talked about is the right time to adjust the plan is when you notice the
inversion happening or when you can start to feel the tremors that the inversion is about

to happen.

The opponent is doing things that you did not expect them to do.

The plan probably needs to change.

Yeah, you're in this, you the analogy of like when your competitors start using your own
stuff against you, when the competitors start to succeed at things that you thought you

were going to succeed at.

But I wonder if it's almost something like, you know, can you recognize when a threat,
when a new change in the environment, when a change in the dynamics is big enough that

your original goal might not even matter anymore, like might not be the right goal, right?

When you get to the point where like, you know,

this might not work and doubling down on it might be worse, right?

There's still a point probably in this movie where Hans Gruber could just like take what's
left of his team and just get out, right?

Just like escape, change the plan enough that they can just get away, but he doesn't.

He won't let go of the big mission, which may or may not be achievable.

And so he just keeps getting farther and farther into trouble.

Can we think of like sort of business analogs of this situation or practical, you know,
practical analogs of that, like blindness to a threat.

So of course, the onset of all the new technology, internet and AI and stuff like that
over the past couple of decades, there's probably a million different examples of that.

One that comes to mind is that a transformation coach always used to tell us about that we
had is he used to work at Motorola and he worked as a quality engineer at Motorola earlier

in his career.

And one of the things that he experienced was the transition from analog to digital.

Hmm.

The Motorola was so sure that the analog cellular way that we were doing things was the
way and that they were the best at that thing.

They did not adjust fast enough to the outside environment.

They were like, well, other people can do this digital and that's a separate thing.

And, you know, that's going to be their core competency rather than recognizing that that
threat was coming for them and that it was inevitable at that point.

It's just a failure to change the plan based on

the things that are happening outside.

Right.

No, makes sense.

think the other classic example that people always talk about is like Kodak, which was
like the camera company and the film company and synonymous with the entire industry

actually invented digital photography, didn't internally support it because it was a
threat to their core business.

actually invented digital photography, didn't internally support it because it was a
threat to their core business.

And so they let it go.

then it turned out to kill them.

I love that because it's got the analogy of like the thing that defeats the terrorists,
the

the criminals in this movie.

reason that Hans doesn't win is John McClane using all of his weapons against him, like
the plastic explosives and the guns, everything that John uses is stuff that he found in

the building or that he took from his enemies.

Right?

Like the idea that you're sort of bringing your own downfall with you and have to guard
against like it being used in ways that you didn't expect has a fun symmetry to it.

But also it's also sort of a real thing, right?

If you're

If you're the expert in a thing and you're bringing these tools to bear, but then you
don't recognize how disruptive they're going to be, you might, you might stay attached to

the wrong mission too long.

Yeah, so how do we identify what is a threat that's worth responding to and what is a
distraction?

We talked about one way that we can do that, which is looking for the inversion.

But oftentimes the inversion is still a reaction.

If you're waiting to see an inversion, if you're waiting to see the opponent do something
that you didn't expect, then you inevitably have had to wait for them to have already done

something that you didn't expect.

How do you get ahead of that and know when

We just need to stick to the plan versus, okay, the plan might need to change right now.

Right.

And so like one of the, playbook for that might be like we talked about in the last
episode is if you're surrounding yourself with competent people, if you are seeking out

strong advisors and people that have more experience than you in different domains, like
you can, you can kind of keep checking the plan.

Like, Hey, this thing is happening.

Does this still seem like a good idea?

How big of a threat is that really?

Right.

But I feel like the, the goal is to, you know, the, biggest test is just to be testing
like.

But I feel like the, the goal is to, you know, the, biggest test is just to be testing
like.

Is my big picture plan still achievable?

Is this still the right goal that we're going after?

Or is something gotten big enough of a threat that actually calls into question whether
we're even working on the right thing, right?

If it's just that somebody else is working a little bit harder or somebody else had an
early win, or we had an early failure, like that might be okay.

But if the early failure illuminates that like, actually your goal may not be achievable
anymore, or might not be worthwhile when you get there.

How do you not hold onto that too long?

I think is, you know,

You can't be too optimistic.

You don't want to spend all your time, you know, planning for alternate paths, but you do
want to like, just be very pragmatic about like, are we going to get there or not?

You don't want to spend all your time, you know, planning for alternate paths, but you do
want to like, just be very pragmatic about like, are we going to get there or not?

Yeah, and I think you're right.

That is the primary concern.

It's just making sure that you're staying on mission.

And does the mission need to change?

Do we need to rephrase the A00?

Whatever you want to say, right?

Is our core objective still intact?

And is it even the highest priority thing that we should work on right now?

Like you said, because Hans probably should have worked out a different strategy, which is
now the plan is we need to take out on, we need to take out McLean and we need to get out

Like you said, because Hans probably should have worked out a different strategy, which is
now the plan is we need to take out on, we need to take out McLean and we need to get out

of here.

And if we can get the money, great.

But if not,

We probably just need to live to fight another day.

Now, the other side of that, Brian, is, okay, well, what if the mission is still in line?

What if the mission hasn't changed?

Our core business is still needing to go a certain direction, or at least we need to go
after this market or something like that.

And in that situation, I think what's helpful is to put your futurist hat on.

Okay, what does a futurist do?

A futurist looks at what could happen and says, okay, well, somebody, now I have some
information that's suggesting,

A futurist looks at what could happen and says, okay, well, somebody, now I have some
information that's suggesting,

Maybe this future is possible.

I don't know when necessarily might be five years.

It might be two years, whatever.

But maybe there's a future possible where this gets flipped in our market share flips with
our competitor, where our competitors able to put out a product that has these features

that we thought were impossible.

Something like that.

You imagine that future.

And then what does a futurist do?

A futurist looks for precursors.

Okay, I need to back myself through the process.

John McLean is a threat to me.

What would it take for him to foil the mission entirely?

Well, it would take him either stopping us from breaking into the safe.

It would take him taking out Hans.

It would take him freeing the hostages.

It would take him foiling the FBI, taking out the electrical system.

Like it's going to take one of those things for him to do it.

Now, how we just have to keep backing yourself back in terms of precursors.

Right.

And we talked about in the last episode, right?

The idea of if you've got the high level mission and you understand the building blocks
that feed into that mission, like, yeah, if one of those building blocks is under severe

threat, then that might be a problem you have to patch.

But if like the even the succeeding of the high level mission or the value of the high
level mission, if that's under threat, right, then it's time for some real soul searching

and some pivoting.

we don't see that.

We see everybody doubling down to the nth degree because it's a Hollywood action movie.

Right.

And that's, that's what makes it fun.

The explosions have to get bigger.

but we also see like, yeah, despite, despite the best laid plans and despite having all
the skillset that seems like it would be required, Bonfgruber runs up against opposition

that was more committed and more creative than he expected and doesn't adapt accordingly.

It's almost interesting though, now that I'm thinking about it, we're questioning should
Hans have reacted sooner.

And if you just put your futures hat on and say, what would it take for John to be able to
break through here?

The way that I think about it oftentimes is what is the parlay that has to hit?

So to put that in layman's terms, it's, need A to happen, B to happen, C to happen, D to
happen, E to happen.

So that's five legs and each one might be, they might stack on each other to be more
likely after the first one happens or whatever, or they might, some of them might be

really, really long shots.

they would have, our competitor would have to have a breakthrough in this technology
that's thought impossible.

Okay, like is that really going to happen?

So when you kind of think about that parlay that has to hit for a certain situation to
happen, that's where, I mean, I'll just put it in really simple terms that we think about.

So when you kind of think about that parlay that has to hit for a certain situation to
happen, that's where, I mean, I'll just put it in really simple terms that we think about.

So one thing that,

really tying it back to, you know, football analytics and sports betting.

look at what people are really high on player a people are really high on Isaiah Pacheco
for the Kansas city chiefs of this year or something like that.

Okay.

Well, they're taking him above other players in a draft.

They're really, they're paying more for him.

They're investing in his future.

They're betting on his future and it just keeps going up and up and up.

And are they biased because he's on a really good team?

Is he really capable of scoring all of these points or getting all these yards or
whatever?

And that's where you can put your futurist hat on and say, well, the parlay that has to
hit for him to pay off at what people are currently investing in him, if you just think

about it almost like a futures market, like what would the parlay be for this guy to
actually hit?

It starts to become really far -fetched.

You're like, well, the Chiefs, who are historically the team that passes the most in the
NFL, would have to run the ball more.

Yes.

already a long shot to start with and no other running back would have to get a lot of
work and the running touchdowns Exactly.

He's not gonna get hurt.

by the way, he just got hurt like it's a

no, this is great because you can actually use this two different ways, right?

We could say like Hans should have been doing this all along.

Like, you know, is it likely that we're going to succeed?

Is it likely that McLean is going to succeed?

What would it take?

Right.

But, actually it occurs to me like their original plan is extremely detailed and really
good and very, you know, and has all this wonderful elements to it, but it's pretty

brittle.

Like a lot of stuff has to happen in just the right order with like, in just the right
timeline.

And that's why they're so freaked out when bad stuff starts happening is that they're, you
know, they're like, you know, we've only got, we've got two hours and then this has to be

in place.

And so the plan itself might have been a bit farfetched, right?

And it's ridiculously farfetched.

Let's be serious.

Like this is a ridiculous movie, but, even the context of the movie, like you can imagine
like, yeah, there should have been maybe a little bit more like, okay, there's a couple of

different ways that this could go down.

Not like we need these exact things to happen in this order.

Right, so a little bit of overconfidence in the quality of the plant might be part of the
downfall here.

That's really good.

I love that you brought that back the opposite side.

It's not just the threat that you can look at the parlay.

It's like the plan.

We should not make plans that require that you hit a very long parlay in order for it to
pay off.

That's just, you're taking way too big of a risk there for the gain that you're gonna get.

Well, and I think what the, and so the story there is do at least a little bit of threat
planning beforehand, right?

Look at the weak points in your plan and the failure modes that it could, and just think
about like how you could, you know, what are you going to do if X, Y, and Z happens?

If a competitor gets out ahead of you, if one of your pieces doesn't work, if the
technology doesn't get developed in time or whatever, like have some idea how you're going

to react to those.

So you don't have to invent them in the moment when they happen to you.

You're like, my gosh, I'm completely surprised that not everybody cooperated with my plan.

Like.

That's probably a fair criticism of Hans Gruver's unreasonable plan, as fun to watch as it
is and as competent as he is.

That's probably a fair criticism of Hans Gruver's unreasonable plan, as fun to watch as it
is and as competent as he is.

There's some stuff that had to happen in a very specific order here that was maybe a bit
of a stretch.

That was awesome, Brian.

Alright, let's wrap it up with some key takeaways.

Yeah, I think we started off talking about Bayesian thinking or the John Maynard Keynes
quote, when the facts change, I change my mind.

The willingness to get off of our priors quickly when the situation has changed.

This is basically what sinks every business at some point is the unwillingness to get off
of your priors on how the strategy should be executed, on what the product should be for

the customer, whatever it might be, and which allows somebody else to capitalize on that.

no, no, I'm sorry to jump in on that, that's the way I think about almost that is like the
definition of a successful company is one that's figured out a set of behaviors, a set of

priors that they can leverage, right?

That their assumptions are working and they are successful and they are doing something
that provides value in the world and they're getting rewarded for it, right?

And so every company that succeeds has already done that well once.

And the trick is once you've kind of, once you've built your organization around those
assumptions about the world, when those assumptions start to break, then it's really hard

to rejigger the organization, the strategy, the operations, which people you have, what
jobs they're doing, what products you're selling, whatever it is.

Like that's like you're, that's a huge one, right?

Is being able to change your, not just your mind when the facts change, but being able to
change your behaviors when the facts change to adapt to.

this isn't just a temporary blip.

This is like, there's something new in the world.

That's really good.

then Brian, you talked about recognizing when we need to even change the mission.

It's not just about changing the plan, but sometimes the actual mission or the priority of
the objectives have changed.

Right, and so that's the like, maybe being the best film camera maker in the world is no
longer a good business idea.

Maybe there's some potential that if that's all we plan for that we could be in.

Yep, we talked about identifying a threat versus a distraction and really how to know when
something has crossed over into threat for sure.

And it is reactive still, but when what you're predicting the opponent does is not what
the opponent is actually doing and they're successful with it.

That's a pretty good indicator that the plan or the mission needs to change.

And that feeds into the, you know, paying attention to your opponents.

The, you know, the fun takeaway from this movie was sort of the inversion when the
antagonist Hans Gruber stops being proactive and starts reacting and our protagonist, John

McClane starts to get out on top of things and be making stuff happen.

Right.

And you recognize yourself getting into that mode of like, I'm getting very reactive.

Like I didn't see this coming and I'm spending all my time fighting fires and I'm spending
all my time trying to get back on track rather than thinking about the future.

then you're probably in reactive mode and that's, you just reacting will never get you out
of it.

You can't react faster as a plan.

The plan has to be like, okay, react fast enough to stabilize things, but let's look at
the, you know, remember to zoom out.

And I think we say that a lot on, on Wonder Tour, like the leaders, the leader's job is to
be the one that remembers to zoom out.

But we certainly see the, we see some examples of losing track of that in this movie.

That was a fun ride with you, Brian.

We went back, checked out Die Hard.

Where are we going next week?

Well, we're going to continue our villain series.

We're going to come back into the comic book universe.

We're going to see the most recent Matt Reeves, the Batman movie, and we're going to
examine the antagonist of the Riddler, who is another one of those kind of, you know, he's

not a brute force antagonist.

He's a thoughtful and clever and strategic antagonist.

And so it'll be fun to see how the Riddler approaches trying to achieve his goals and what
situations that puts our heroes in.

We'll be back next week.

All right, this was fun.

Thanks, everyone, for joining us.

As always, we'll be back to talk about the Batman.

In the meantime, just remember, as always, as Han Gruber learned, character is, in fact,
destiny.

In the meantime, just remember, as always, as Han Gruber learned, character is, in fact,
destiny.