Argo: Belief in the Impossible (spoiler alert)
Argo.
Have you seen it?
Hardly new, the film was released in 2012 and deservedly won an Oscar.
I don’t want to give too much away of the plot. The film is based on a true story. Revolutionary Iran 1979 and seven US consular staff are holed up in the Canadian embassy in Tehran. They face a stark choice – try and escape and risk certain death, or wait until they are caught.
Enter the CIA. Tony Mendez to be exact. A man who thought outside the box. What he came up with would not be deemed plausibel if someone wrote it out as a screenplay for a movie and took it around directors. Immediately, they would all say that this was just too unbelievable. That’s the great thing about real life. You can’t make it up – stuff happens, sometimes unbelievable stuff happens. We have all experienced that in our lives – right?
Anyway, back to Argo, and so Mendez decides to enter Iran pretend to be part of a Canadian film crew scouting locations in post- revolutionary Tehran. His hope is to be able to contact the Americans hiding out and then for all of them to make a break for it.
As I say I’ll leave you to watch this excellent film. My thoughts are elsewhere. First of all the depiction of movie pre-production was about right. People describe Hollywood as the ‘capital of make believe’. They’re right, but that’s only the people who work there. They are all making it up as they go along. Argo caught that side perfectly.
There was something else to the movie that caught my eye though. It was the initiative deployed by Mendez on a seemingly insuperable problem. This man thought like any entrepreneur. He dared to think the unthinkable, not only that he was able to carry out the unthinkable.
Now apply that to your business – present or future. Just for once, start to think the unthinkable. There is something about situations such as the one Mendez faced that need a lightness of touch rather than a heavy handed one. By that I mean that this is when one needs the creative side of the brain to kick in rather than the logical. If Mendez had thought, like so many others in the CIA, only in logical terms then he would have done nothing about the trapped consular staff. The solutions were just not there. Instead, he let the other side of his brain kick in. And, guess what? Solutions came.
What is not clear from the film is the amount of self-doubt Mendez had about the whole crazy scheme he had dreamt up. Even he must have doubted what he was engaged in. So too, from time to time, we are bound to wonder about the path we have taken. At some time or another we are likely to look back and think: is this the right road? What we should be thinking is: look how far I’ve come!
People underestimate the need for creativity in business. Some think business is all about facts and figures. To some extent that is true, but you still need a vision. A vision inspires not just your customers and clients but also helps you to keep going when the road gets rough, and it will surely become so from time to time. So it is important to dream about where it is you are heading and remind yourself of the bigger picture of why you are doing this – whatever stage of the entrepreneurial journey you are at.
Like Mendez there will be times when you are on your ‘mission’ when you are ‘faking it’. Not deceiving anyone, I’m not advocating anything of that sort, but, instead, I’m talking about playing a role that is not yet fully realized. Sometimes you just have to say this is what I’m doing even if everyone around you hasn’t quite caught up with your new role in life. This will sound awfully familiar to any entrepreneurs out there.
Do you remember that time when you announced that you were going to be an entrepreneur? I’m sure there were some in your circle who could not even spell the word let alone understand its implications in your life and for your future. Still, you persevered and guess what they are the exact same people who refer to you today as an ‘entrepreneur’. Not their fault, more a testament to your perseverance and self-belief. Put bluntly, if you don’t believe that you are what you say you are then how is anyone else going to either?
They say ‘fake it till you make it’. Okay, but I’m more a believer in doing it until you become it. There’s nothing about pretending here. You are doing it – whatever that is – and by so doing you become it.
Take music, for example, many people want to be a professional musician. How do you become one? By playing gigs, paid gigs, and that way you become a professional musician. Now whether you can make a living at it is another debate altogether, but you see the principle. One thing is for sure; you do not become something by simply talking about it. At some point you have to commit to it by doing it.
So too in Argo by pretending to be something Mendez becomes it – enough to do what he has to do – but listen watch the movie and think of the daring involved in choosing to do anything in life, and then, do me a favor: go and do it!
