Customer Reviews

The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons from the Movies

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I first heard about The Big Picture, I was very intrigued. I'm a huge movie buff and always on the lookout for business books that can deliver useful information in a more interesting and creative way. Up to this point, my favorite has been I'll Make You An Offer You Can't Refuse: Insider Business Tips from a Former Mob Boss: Michael Franzese.

In The Big Picture, Kevin Coupe and Michael Sansolo use popular movies, from the classics to the current, to illustrate each business point being presenting.

For example, in regard to "Word of Mouth Advertising", the faux-climax scene from When Harry Met Sally was used. Once Sally's throes of passion subside, she takes a bite of her sandwich; the customer next to her states, "I'll have what she's having". Business point: Sally is a happy, satisfied customer and the others want to feel the same way. As an alternate perspective, Michael Sansolo relates a story that demonstrates the affect a dissatisfied customer can have on business: while on a flight to Washington Michael purchased a snack from the attendant, only to find it past it's "use by" date. When brought to the flight attendant's attention, she failed to appropriately remedy the situation; resulting in the surrounding passengers returning their snacks as well.

Other examples include "Never Underestimate Your Competition", illustrated by Tucker: The Man and His Dream; "Denial Is Never A Good Thing", illustrated by Jaws; and one of my favorites "Go the Distance", which probably has less to the do with the business lesson and more to do with how Rocky (one of the best movies ever: "Take her to da zoo Rock") was used to portray it.

The Big Picture is a very fun, quick read that does a great job of getting key business points across. Coupe and Sansolo manage to take an oft-covered topic and make it fresh and interesting. For those who want to continue the lessons, Appendix B lists additional movies and their corresponding business topic; which would go a long way in spicing up those mind-numbing corporate "team leader" meetings. Well, it looks like I have a new favorite--but let's not tell Michael Franzese...

"The Big Picture" is a thoroughly enjoyable trip down movie memory lane that, at the very least, will make you wonder why they just don't make movies like they used to. Once you've read it for fun, you'll want to read it again to grasp the basic, but powerful business and life lessons Kevin Coupe and Michael Sansolo have cleverly extracted from movies as diverse as High Noon, Sex and the City, and Amadeus. As I read it - for a third time - I wrote down several "gems." Some are helpful for keeping business challenges in perspective; others make great content for business presentations. Still others have been useful dinner conversation starters and object lessons when talking with my two teenagers. Totally worth the time to read ... each time.

What a great read, not just to enjoy brief reviews of movies but also to have a correlation to a busines use. It is a quick and enjoyable read, especially if you enjoy the movies. The challenge can be in letting yourself build off of each business lesson you read and determine if you completely agree or have something you would have enhanced. That very possibility leads to the potential of using this for business discussions. I think Michael and Kevin were right on with their points and many were very timely in todays business environment.

The additional value is that not every movie was a critical classic but each clearly had a business lesson that you may be able to use to make a point in a future discussion. As an example, Tin Cup is a favorite of mine but probably not critically acclaimed as a great movie. There are several great points in this movie you could draw on and the one they pulled was right on.
Enjoy the book for the easy read that it is but plan to use it to enhance a business point at some time in the future, this may be it's greatest value.

This book couldn't be more timely for me; I just got back from a meeting where we watched excerpts of Invincible, the Disney film on the life of Vince Papale and the Philadelphia Eagles. It didn't hurt that Papale himself was there in person as a motivational speaker, giving us lessons about his life and how they applied to our endeavors. It was a VERY memorable meeting. And yes, there are lessons you can derive from film that apply to business life. Many times, I've been to meetings where films are used to highlight a message or drive home a lesson. These are the meetings I remember, even years later.

In "The Big Picture" various films are summarized and coded to highlight certain business concepts. For example, Tucker is coded for Branding, Rule-Breaking, Customer Focus and Leadership. You can go through the book and look for situations that you might like to address to your team, and use the film summary as a discussion. The codes will let you scan quickly to see what applies to your situation.

Since film involves two senses, sight and sound, it is a powerful medium to engage everyone's mind and emotions. We love drama, don't we, and this is a handy book to extract a number of business concepts from familiar films like "Big,", "Star Trek, The Last Frontier", "The Guns of Navaronne" and many more. The situations are not particularly deep in most cases, but they are sufficiently important to fit many business situations that apply to almost any work you might be doing.

This is enjoyable reading but also a useful reference to keep on the shelf for the next time you need to get your team together and deal with an issue of importance. Using films can add excitement and fun as well as a bigger impact to your message. You probably will want to keep a copy handy.

I liked this book. I especially liked the content, but I wasn't particularly impressed with its organization and indexing. It included an introduction, six chapters, a conclusion, and two appendices. The 51 different "business lessons" were categorized by movie-type as follows:

0. Introduction
1. Action/Adventure movies [1-10]
2. Biopic/Documentary movies [11-14]
3. Classics [15-21]
4. Comedy [22-35]
5. Date movies [36-41]
6. Drama [42-51]
7. Conclusion
A. Alphabetical listing of movies
B. Movies categorized by the six business topics

Each of the business lessons were categorized as either (1) Rule Breakers, (2) Leadership, (3) Ethics, (4) Branding, (5) Planning, or (6) Customer Focus. Many of the business lessons were tagged with more than one of the six business topics. Since this was supposed to be a "Business Book," I would have liked it much better if it had been organized as follows:

I. Rule Breakers - Be the exception, not the rule
>>16. Don't take the uneducated risk
>>22. Be different
>>48. Travel the road less taken
II. Leadership - Stand up & take responsibility
>>23. In tough times, quality wins
>>28. Nearly everyone can be a leader
>>36. Cross the thin line between good & great
III. Ethics - Do the right thing
>>19. Do the right thing
>>30. Make the right decisions
>>47. Know the value of ethics & truth
IV. Planning - Get the facts & do research so you can plan
>>1. Denial is never a good idea
>>20. Stick to the fundamentals
>>43. Get busy living
V. Branding - Stand out & know your place
>>14. Shape perception to succeed
>>27. Everybody needs a fish story
>>42. Protect your brand
VI. Customer Focus - Don't forget you answer to the customer
>>12. Celebrate diversity
>>24. Be the customer
>>37. Use word-of-mouth advertising

The way the book was actually organized caused me to wonder about the significance of most or almost all the business lessons posed. Sure, they made sense, but how was I going to convert them from the written page into my head so they become working knowledge for me? There were 25 lessons tagged as Rule Breakers, 24 tagged as Leadership, 17 tagged as Ethics, 12 as Branding, 12 as Planning, and 9 as Customer Focus. And I failed to find in the book the definitions for any of the six tags. I have taken a little liberty in defining each herein above.

All in all, I thought the scope of the book was too large to be neatly organized. The concept of using movies to provide metaphors when explaining business lessons is great. But why not focus on just the marketing aspects of business: Branding and Customer Focus? Or why not focus on the leadership aspects of business: Leadership, Ethics, and Planning? Or maybe the strategic aspects of business: Rule Breakers, Strategy, Innovation, & Business Models?

What this book does well is point out that anyone with a point to make (whether in business or not) can cite scenes or aspects of a movie or movies to help communicate their message better. In my business coaching days I often cited the scene in You've Got Mail where Tom Hanks guessed how much Meg Ryan's little book store grossed in a year. He explained he was able to do so because he was in the book business. The business lesson: If you know your business, your market, and your industry, then you can easily estimate what your competition is doing. There are few secrets when someone is in the know. 4 stars!

Kevin Coupe and Michael Sansolo have come up with a unique, informative, clever, and very entertaining book - THE BIG PICTURE: ESSENTIAL BUSINESS LESSONS FROM THE MOVIES. The writing style is fluid, the chosen format of very brief 'chapters' is breezy and user-friendly, and while the mission of this book is to share ideas on how to improve the workplace both from the vantage of the worker and the executive leadership by the clever manner of relating topics to well known movies and their lead ideas, the bonus here is excellent mini-reviews or summations of films as entertaining as any published in the media.

Each brief chapter, hallmarked by the graphic of a director's chair bearing the name of which of the two authors is writing, is assigned an idea, lists the reference movies at the top of the page, and 'rates' the topic much the way movies are rated in the ads in the media. Example: Michael 'directs' a chapter discussion of 'Find a Role Model', the reference movies being GANDHI (1982) and SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993), and the box of ratings lists RB (Rule Breakers), E (Ethics), L (Leadership) - Suggested for all business audiences. The following discussion describes the lives of Gandhi and Schindler and uses these men as guideposts for why they were role models worth emulating in the workplace. At the end of the brief discussion written by Michael (excellent plot summations of these two films!), Kevin provides his retort (Kevin POV = Kevin's Point of View) ending with the message "You don't have to be Gandhi or Schindler. Sometimes you just have to be a business executive who wants to do the right thing.'

Topics related via movie comparisons include 'Be the Customer" (BIG), 'Take a New Perspective' (WORKING GIRL), 'Allow for the Possibility that You're Wrong' (SEX AND THE CITY), 'Vision Trumps All' (THE PRODUCERS) - and so many more, but you get the 'picture...'. Buy this book as a movie buff, buy this book as a creative working person, or just buy it because of the clever information it contains. Grady Harp, February 10

What a great read. Who doesn't use phrases from movies in every day conversations and now Coupe and Sansolo relate them to business applications. Like a slap to the forehead this book brings a new relationship to movies and business in a fun, useful, and entertaining way.

Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? This book is for anyone who has ever looked at a situation and thought "It's just like that movie..." What a great idea to catalog all of these moments that we know so well and put them into a form that we can apply to our own lives.

I used to devour even the most academic of business books, but lately have been drawn to less linear publications -- perhaps to balance the complexity of the economic climate, or because I've trained myself to read that way online. The Big Picture is a wonderful antidote whether you're looking to read your first business book, or have a stack of them that you haven't gotten around to yet. It contains memorable, actionable wisdom I've applied to my own work and used to communicate more effectively in times of change. The writers are witty, which makes the reading enjoyable whether you're in the office, airport, or beach cabana.

The book brings a new resource to the office - using popular movies to illustrate business leadership lessons. A few clips or reminders of a movie can bring everybody into a conversation about relevent topics. Movies have become such a part of our culture and this is one of the first tools that uses this common area of interest. I keep a copy on my desk and have had great conversations with my team and two requests for another copy!