WonderTour

Welcome to Lead Wisely by Wunder Tour.

We're in the middle of our series on leadership lessons from the villains in popular
movie.

Today we are doing a classic movie villain series, the Bond movies.

And we're going to look at Skyfall and Raul Silva, the classic foil for the Daniel Craig
James Bond.

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

What is Silva's best trait as a leader and what is his failure mode?

Drew, us off.

I'm really enjoying talking about villains with you, Brian.

It just gives us more to flesh out out of these movies that we love.

I you and I talk about leadership in movies as much as we possibly can and just story in
movies, but this gives us a little bit of a different angle here.

So it's fun to think about the best attributes of a villain.

Now, Silva, like a lot of villains, he's extremely clever.

He's always seemingly one step ahead, almost like a Hans Gruber from Die Hard is who we've
already talked about in a previous episode.

but he's always one step ahead of the MI6 organization.

His whole thing is that, you know, he has figured them out.

He's got this capability to predict what their next action is going to be.

And as a result, he's always going to be ahead of them.

And

Sometimes we see villains that can do that and it's a little bit bland because it's like,
okay, like sure, you're just this master planner and you're able to stay ahead of what

everybody else is thinking and doing because you're the villain, you have to.

But in this situation, it's kind of cool because he has a backstory that explains it, that
he was an MI6 operative, that he was in fact, one of the best.

He was almost like a pre James Bond, James Bond, right?

He was the original orphan who came in and had super high potential and fostered him.

But he kind of wasn't Icarus too.

He flew a little bit too close to the sun.

He got too close to the Chinese and was kind of operating out of bounds.

We don't know exactly what happened, but then this all comes tumbling down on him after he
gets captured and ends up letting him go, making the conscious decision that it would be

better to trade him for these other hostages, given the fact that he was kind of operating
rogue in the situation anyway.

So.

The cool part is that we understand the cleverness.

It's he is a master of the system because he was a part of the system for so long.

He's been thinking about the system.

And when we say the system, we're talking about MI6, like how they do everything that they
do, how they accomplish their mission and achieve their vision for success.

And he's also extremely determined.

He doesn't give up easily.

He has a personal goal that he's going after.

Silva has he has a personal goal and his personal goal is to tear down this system of MI6
and to do it in as most painful of a way as possible.

So he does he has something clear that he's trying to do the problem is that he has this
heuristic.

He believes that he knows the system better than they know the system and that he can
predict better than they can predict.

So that's part one of his flaw.

Part two is that he doesn't really believe in agency.

He just believes the system is going to play out the way the system is gonna play out.

Right, Brian?

He gives us that rat analogy.

Yeah, he is, this is great.

He's like the ultimate disgruntled employee, right?

Like he knows very well how the thing works and he's been, you know, hurt personally
painfully, right?

You know, by the workings of the system.

And so now he's determined to bring it down at any cost.

he has personalized the system into the person of his boss.

Right?

So this is the very specific revenge that he wants to take.

And you're right, despite the fact that he's got quite a bit of, you know, capability
agency in his own life, he almost, the way he explains things is almost like he doesn't

believe in agency.

He doesn't believe that people will be able, you know, that we'll be able to make their
own choices.

He's like, you know, we're just, we're just two rats that were trained by our environment.

You and me, Bob, we're the same.

You just don't understand how the system's victimizing you.

And if you just saw the world that I saw the way I saw it, then you would do the same
thing that I do.

Right.

Which is a, this is a classic villain justification.

This is the classic anybody justification.

I was like, well, just from my perspective, anybody would be the way I'm going to be.

I like how you simplified it there because we can all relate to that.

From my perspective, anybody would be the way I'm going to be.

And in a way, that's fair.

And in another way, is that really what we're trying to achieve though?

Is that really who we want to be?

right, well, and when he's monologue, he's like, yeah, I can bring down countries and I
can destabilize large companies and I can take over this island by terrorizing everybody.

And, you know, we see him, you know, harming large numbers of innocent, invisible people
off screen and on just because they happen to be in the way of the thing that he wants to

accomplish.

This is this is clearly not an aspirational goal.

But you're right, like he.

He's very comfortable with the complexity of the system.

He's he's portrayed as a technology savant and he's got this room full of computer racks
and this super high tech, you laptop that he's working on.

He's comfortable with using that technology to achieve his very narrow goal.

And he's comfortable with sort of distracting other people with the technology, which he
does very skillfully throughout the movie.

But the thing that he's trying to accomplish is very personal and very reactive, right?

It's a very narrow little goal.

I got hurt and I'm going to, I'm going to be.

be mean back to the people that were mean to me.

So, and the thing that gets him in trouble is that he assumes that everybody else is just
going to react to their environment in these predictable ways.

going to assume they're going to use their complicated system and he's going to trick them
and then they're going to be defenseless.

And then he's going to just, you know, and then he'll know what's going to happen.

And of course, as the movie plays out, as we often see in these hero stories, right.

The, the inversion of the story is at some point James Bond has to figure out like how not
to just play that game.

how to choose what game they're playing.

And when you do that, then the terms of engagement become...

Exactly.

And that's what we're going to talk about as we move forward.

We start out with this Silva narrowing agency and just believing that everybody is just
going to do exactly what the system is designed for them to do, including himself, which

is an extremely dangerous way to act.

And of course we have our hero bond who is going to shake up the system, but we'll talk
about that after the intro.

Hi, I am Brian Notwell.

And we are in a journey to lead wisely, 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,
all one word.

All right, let's get back to it.

So let's talk a little bit about sort of the linchpin character in this movie between
these two, you know, between these two agents, between these two heroes, between Bond and

Silva.

The common thread that binds them together is their relationship with

And so is, we see her as a bit of a more fleshed out character in this movie, but we also
see her as not terribly complex, right?

She's incredibly mission focused.

don't see, she doesn't have hobbies.

She doesn't do things off to the side.

She doesn't take vacations.

She's not looking forward to retirement.

She doesn't look forward to her weekends, right?

She's, you know, she's very like the hell with dignity.

I'll leave when the job's done.

She's very mission focused.

She's very purpose focused.

And...

Both of these characters have inherited some of that from her, right?

They're both incredibly dedicated.

They're both willing to go through some privations and put a lot of work into achieving
their goals.

But they seem to have learned different lessons.

So what do you see between Bond and Silva about how they've inherited something from him?

Yeah, like you said, they both inherited the determination that we talked about.

Now, they've also obviously both been harmed by in a similar but different way.

had to see the bigger picture, zoom out and make a call both times.

And both times it resulted in them being the one who had to take the brunt of the hit.

They were the one who had to pay the price so that the bigger mission could be
accomplished.

Now, the difference between

what Bond learns from this and what Silva learns from this, it all does come back to their
relationship with I think, because we get this irreparable harm to the relationship with

Silva.

Now, I think that they do a really good job the way that this was written and especially
the way that Javier Bordem portrays Silva in showing the conflict that he even has because

he, in his mind, while he was being tortured when he had to take the cyanide pill and it
failed,

he had this revelation he describes when he's in there in the glass jail cell, basically
talking to them that it was actually who, you know, wasn't the mission wasn't worth it.

And had really screwed him over in the situation.

And was just a pawn.

He realized he had thought of her as something great.

But then what he realizes in his own mind is that she's just a pawn for the system.

And we don't see that happen with bond

consistently makes like even think about the time when Bond comes back and he meets at the
house and is like if anything except warm and inviting to the fact that she just found out

that her best agent and you know, pseudo son is back.

Yeah, exactly.

She's not like, I miss you so.

She's like, where the hell have you been?

Like, you know, we needed you to do a job.

Exactly, she's like extremely disappointed that he was not working as hard as she was
while she was working, which is great.

But in a way, he respects that.

And I think it's that lack of respect.

That's one of the things that gets lost.

It's this framing.

frames himself as the victim.

That's that change in his mind he has at that moment.

Instead of framing himself as the soldier, he frames himself as the victim.

Mm-hmm.

a result, it changes the lens by which he views and now is this pawn of the system where
Bond has that choice.

And he can say, wow, looking backwards, you're very outcome oriented, but looking
backwards and made a bad decision.

And that decision almost killed me.

He could become bitter or he could say, you know, there was multiple ways that this could
have played out and made the best call, but I trust her.

I respect her as the leader of the organization.

And I believe.

that whether the outcome was what I wanted or not, her intention was good.

Right.

Yeah, and there's this, there's a saying I like that people see the world as they see
themselves, right?

And that they're, know, Silva is very much, from what we hear of his background, like he
was pretty selfish, kind of going off the reservation a little bit, independent actor,

even before all this happened, right?

But he's very much about like, well, I would have done this just for myself.

And so I'm assuming that that's what happened is was just like, it was better for her to
sacrifice me.

And so...

He's assuming everybody in the system is either a victim of the system and or completely
self-interested in just trying to survive.

Whereas, you know, whereas Bonn sees in and like she's sacrificing herself for the broader
good, for the security of the country, for taking care of the masses.

And he sees himself as like he's internalized that lesson very thoroughly.

it's almost like the difference between the frontline agent and the quartermaster and the
people who are sitting in the back, right?

It's like Bond to an extent is able to see the nuance of how they're both important and
they must work together.

And we see that argument he has with the new quartermaster queue where they kind of have
the debate and he, you know, has some dry British humor about getting shot and saying

like, yeah, it's easy to say, take the shot when you're sitting at home in your pajamas.

Right.

But that's kind of

Interesting that that is the nuance there is it seems like how does Silva be in his own
mind see himself as the victim?

Well, he's like, well, I was the one on the front line.

She wasn't the one on the front line.

When in reality, what Bond realizes is like, dang it, every single day, every minute,
every hour is sacrificing herself.

Just doesn't matter that she's not on the front.

Right.

Yeah.

He recognizes the value of, you know, of going in there and doing things in person.

Right.

that's, you know, Bond's, I mean, his solution in all of these movies is to go personally
jump into danger and shoot something.

Right.

Look, he's not a subtle guy, right.

But he, but he's always, but he's the exemplar of the value of taking personal risks to go
accomplish the mission.

Right.

That's what he did is like his whole approach to this entire movie is like, I'm going to
go find this person.

and put myself very close to him and then call for help and then we'll capture him.

And then when he gets away, I'm going to go, you know, I'm going to set things up so that
he comes to me, but I'm going to confront the risk myself.

I'm going to confront the challenges myself.

you know, that's a, that helps him unlock some of these complexities in the system that we
see, right?

you know, that's a, that helps him unlock some of these complexities in the system that we
see, right?

Everybody else is dependent on these, you know, distracted by the shiny objects and the
new quarter master gets sucked into the, you know, the, the, complexity and the, the over

of the computer systems.

And yeah, and Bond is, he's, he's very direct, but he's also, you know, his big difference
is that he has internalized the mission, right?

He's, he's viewing Emma as the personalization of the mission.

Like she's, she's the avatar of why I'm doing what I'm doing, right?

So I got to keep her safe, but it's because of this purpose where Silver really doesn't
believe in purpose, but Silver believes in rats eating rats.

Yeah, that's true.

let's give Silva one more silver lining here.

Let's talk about our mountaintop.

And our mountaintop in this first episode is going to be maybe from Silva's perspective.

What was the mountaintop supposed to be for him in this narrative?

So Brian, why don't you introduce us to our mountaintop here as we talk about how Silva
takes

something so complex as the system that is MI6 and national security, and he boils it down
to something super simple that he executes on that is aligned with his goals.

Yeah, so there's a lot of parallels to the Die Hard movie, This is an incredibly complex,
somewhat brittle plan with a deceptively simple goal.

Hans Gruber was throwing up all these smoke screens about freeing terrorist organizations
and involving the FBI and know, crimes of the business and whatever.

And really, the only thing to care about was getting into the vault.

The whole thing was a smoke screen to get him into the vault.

At the same time, Silva's got this multi-layered plan where he's stolen this

hard drive and he's releasing agents names on the internet and so they're getting murdered
and he's pulling all these other things and then Bon comes to him and he gets captured and

he gets put in a cage and they get his laptop and they're breaking into his laptop and all
of this stuff is aimed at him getting as close as he can inside MI6 get back to get back

to him get back to his revenge right so his his ultimate mission is not really
nine-dimensional wizard chess he's like not trying to take over the world he's just trying

to get close enough to hurt somebody

And he's doing all these very complex things because he sort of understands the system
well enough to pull the levers.

So where's our, so what's our mountaintop moment here?

What's the, what's the exemplar of the culmination of this plan?

Yeah, so he brings it all together here when he really pulls the wool over Q's eyes,
honestly.

But it starts a little bit earlier than that.

mean, even going back to allowing himself to be captured, right?

He has this elaborate thing going on on this island, like a plan to pull Bond in.

And of course he lets himself get captured and taken back to MI6 so that he can have that
conversation with And then from there, he's planted this computer.

And he's planted it in such a way that it is very much this puzzle to be solved for Q and
by solving the puzzle, he will create a pull mechanism.

It's like the whole thing is kind of cool.

If you're thinking about how do you make an executable plan?

Because really Silva sets all this up and then the thread just gets pulled through for
him, right?

He, he creates a poll.

He bond comes to him.

And then Bond calls in reinforcements and they take Silva back.

So they bring Silva to their base, which is what he wants.

And then he needs to get out of their base after he's had the conversation and complete
the personal mission that he has.

And so what does he do?

He's already created another pull mechanism.

He's got the, he's got the code that Q is going to hack.

He's got the, he's got the code that Q is going to hack.

And when he does, it's going to create a reverse polarity.

It's going to pull him back out by letting him free.

And he doesn't really have to do much except run.

That's it.

Right.

Yeah, but he's because he's done all the pre work of like, well, I'm going to do this.

I'm to blow up the one building so that they move underground where I know how things
work.

And then I'm going to give them this irresistible shiny puzzle.

Like, you know, the huge like, it's like solving a Rubik's Cube, this fighting back.

like what nerd wouldn't love that challenge?

Like there's no way he's going to do anything other than press all the buttons until he
gets it to turn green.

And then guess what?

You know, you know, so he's he falls victim to the allure of the complexity of the sexy.

problem to solve.

so that's, yeah, that's still kind of the culmination of his plan where everything is
going right up until that point is that he is able to get free in London from the base,

you know, having, you know, having diffused a lot of the potential threats and now he's on
the loose and he's got people on the ground helping him get to the point where he can go,

you know, assassinate him or whatever it is that he wants to

And so that's, you know, as a, like I said, it's a sort of a Hans Gruber plan as a
supervillain, it's probably unnecessarily complicated for the sake of making a fun movie,

but it is this, you know, he's got this understanding of how people are going to behave.

He's got this understanding of how the system is designed to behave and he's able to sort
of apply pressure at the right points and get it to respond in the ways that he wants.

And that's a...

That's a useful skill.

That's an aspirational thing.

If you can take a complex environment and keep in mind your simple goal and just sort of
move the letters around the outside to get that thing done, that would be really useful to

be able to do.

So I don't know if you, if I had a, example that came to mind, this could be anecdotal.

So I don't know if you, if I had a, example that came to mind, this could be anecdotal.

So I don't know if you, if I had a, example that came to mind, this could be anecdotal.

I don't know for sure.

but I had a friend years ago who went to work for a Boeing in the commercial aircraft
division and they were working on a super jumbo aircraft, bigger than the 747.

And he was in some small or small division of some

sub-piece design of this craft.

And he worked on this project for about a year and a half and then got laid off.

And the story going around the company at the time was that Boeing never had any intention
of building this plane.

They had done the market analysis and decided that it was probably not long-term
profitable, but they wanted to put enough energy into it to convince Airbus to do the same

thing, which turned into the Airbus Super Jumbo, which was then not as successful as
they'd hoped in turning a product that they've since sidelined.

But this was this kind of like, we believe that if we act in this certain way, we can
motivate this other giant complex organization to do the thing that we want, which we

think is actually to our benefit.

It was really kind of a fun story.

But if you sort of think about this, like, how would you, how would you gain these things
out so that you can induce somebody else to work to your benefit?

It's a, this is the game that Silva's playing, which is kind of fun to watch.

It's a, this is the game that Silva's playing, which is kind of fun to watch.

Yeah, the best strategies, especially in the face of a complex system are the simplest.

And like you said, this one is just using the existing system to achieve a goal.

That's it.

I'm not going to do anything outside of the system.

I understand what roles, what processes they have, and I'm just going to provide the right
inputs so that they will run their processes and the output of their process is exactly

what I know it will be.

And it's that simple.

And oftentimes,

I do see that in business, whether it's somebody that I'm mentoring, even just people that
you come across and people don't understand that simple of fact.

It's like, we're trying to do too much, too complex of things.

When in reality, the answer is just, do we understand the system well enough?

Have we tried using the basic aspects of the system, the way that it's intended to be
utilized, even if people are telling you that it doesn't work, it's not going to blah,

blah, blah.

Like we've tried, are we sure?

that we can't just leverage the existing processes to make something happen.

And I'm the transformation guy.

So I'm always saying we should change the processes if it warrants it.

But in order to do that, you have to also know how to leverage the existing processes.

Right.

And part of that is the motivations of the people involved, right?

The constraints that they're under, the incentives that they have, but also just their
intrinsic, what are they trying to do?

And that's, mean, it's classic.

is a Dale Carnegie negotiation technique that's been around forever, right?

Is that, know, if you can convince somebody that it was their idea, if you can convince
somebody to do something that they already wanted to do, I'm going to solve this Rubik's

cube, this fighting back.

Like, you can put them in a situation where they're going to just go run really hard at
that because they like it.

then of course they're going to do the thing you want.

Right.

And so if you can sort of unlock these things by presenting it in a way that it looks like
solving your problem and solving their problem.

And it doesn't have to be nefarious in the level, the way that Silva is doing it, but
that's, you know, the lesson is still there.

And I think one of the things we can see here too, and it's obviously too on the nose, but
the technology often makes things more complicated, not simpler.

There are technologies that simplify things, but that's a rare technology compared to the
complex one.

So when we're having conversations about strategy and technology, it's like, that's the
last piece to fall is what technology do we need in order to solve the problem?

Q's thinking the technology is the problem and it will be the solution where he's getting
had the whole time because the problem was how do I get in and get out?

And the solution was create a puzzle and then you're like, okay, well how do I create a
puzzle for a technology nerd?

Okay.

Now we can talk technology.

The, sometimes the solution to that is to strip away the complexity.

Sometimes the solution to that is to not get distracted by the tool or the system or the
process or the cool shiny whiz bang object.

But right.

get the, we get the line, I think three or four times in this movie is sometimes the old
ways are the best, usually involving a sharp object.

So very James Bond again, he's a, he's a very direct problem solving kind of a character.

but there is this sense of, there is this sense of.

You're at the mercy of the people who are masters of the technology if you're engaging
with them on that basis, right?

If you're talking purpose, if you're talking principle, if you're talking what problem
you're trying to solve, you're talking about which people you're trying to help, it's much

more powerful than if you're arguing about the nuances of how a specific user interface
should work or which protocol we're going to use or how we're going to roll this thing out

and how many man hours it's going to save for quarter.

So, so let's get, so let's get back to some takeaways here.

So what, you know, from this, we see, we see a super villain that has taken advantage of
complex technology for personal gain or for his own purposes.

So what, you know, from this, we see, we see a super villain that has taken advantage of
complex technology for personal gain or for his own purposes.

but his own purposes are incredibly narrow and kind of selfish and reactive.

Right?

So how do we, how do we avoid this trap?

How do we avoid the multiple traps that we see Silva falling into here?

Yeah, we have to have a larger mission and purpose to adhere to.

And we're going to talk a little bit about that in the next episode.

How do you actually foster that?

Because we do see on the flip side, a good example, even if you fail sometimes, you got to
have a larger mission that you can fall back on.

The system is not the mission.

And I think what we see Silva starting to believe is that

the system is actually becoming greater than everything else.

And that's just a dangerous way to live.

You got to take back some agency.

I mean, whether it, you can argue logically if you want to come in here, whether it's true
or not, but it's a better way to live to believe that you have agency and can make a

difference because it's going to result in a lot more satisfaction in your life.

I think we can speak from, we can probably all speak from experience on that.

I think we can speak from, we can probably all speak from experience on that.

Right.

Well, that's, yeah, I think this is a really, this is an interesting topic, right?

Just that the more complicated you make a system, the more it sort of forces certain ways
of behavior because you can't really understand the context.

And she's like, anyway, I just have to do this one thing.

And I assume that the rest of the stuff, you know, you, you get put in these awkward
situations, right?

You really want to design the technology to enable human agency, right?

You want technology to enable people to be good at the things, to, to adhere to their own
purposes, to be more effective.

And what we see the failure mode of MI6 here is that they are sort of victims of bound up
in their system.

And now they're like, the data is out.

don't know how to, you know, they are, they're moving around at the whim of the system
rather than the other way around.

And so, you know, the bond solution to this is to step away from the technology and the
system altogether, which may or may not be practical, but the idea of being very wary of

building in complexity that removes human agency from any...

technology system you're building, I think that's a really powerful lesson.

Yeah, that's really good Brian.

The more complexity you add to a system, the more convergent the system becomes, the more
brittle the system becomes.

Really just in general, more anything you keep adding to a system, the less flexible it
will be, the less resilient it will be in the future.

Thus, when we try to create these lean systems, we want to create basic, basic systems
using pole-based con-bond and stuff like that versus...

yeah, well you can see if we use this technology and that technology and that technology
and we connect it all together, it's like, okay, well now you've spent all this money to

build a thing and you struggle to adapt to the most basic of change points, right?

As soon as the Silva shows up who knows the system better than you, he can immediately
thwart you.

Right.

Yeah.

And so the, the, a reminder to stay focused on enabling the human agency when the system,
because the humans are going to be the ones that can adapt as things change.

Right.

And that's the failure mode we've seen in a couple of these, in a couple of these
episodes, right.

Hans Gruber's failure mode was that he didn't adapt to the situation changing.

Like his plan was too brittle.

His complicated system was too brittle.

And the same thing with the, in the Batman movie, the Riddler's plan was not,

was too brittle against somebody that was going to sacrifice themselves, that was going to
take agency, that had a set of principles that were stronger than revenge.

And this is the same exact thing that's happening here.

something MI6 has this failure mode, but then so does Silva.

something MI6 has this failure mode, but then so does Silva.

That's good.

That's really good.

I'm glad we got to talk systems, Brian.

You know, I'm a big systems nerd.

So anytime I get to talk about systems.

a natural risk for both of us.

So, all right, so Skyfall episode one.

So we've examined Silva's character a little bit in some of his failure modes.

So we're going to come back for episode two and we're going to talk a little, we're going
to have a deeper dive into this movie and we're going to talk a little bit about the

lessons from what Bond does in reaction and how we see that kind of play out as we change
the ground and as we change the tactics.

So, looking forward to that.

Thank you all for joining us.

And just remember until next time, as always, character is destiny.