The American View: Realistic Villains in Workplace Stories

Stories are crucial tools in every leader’s kitbag. Business Reporter's resident U.S. 'blogger warns that ‘effective leaders convey ideas and intent to their people through well-crafted and believable anecdotes. Most of the dystopian fiction that I’ve read recently – especially in the ‘young adult’ subcategory of fiction – tends to miss the dark forest for the oppressive trees. My go-to example of this comes from Suzanne Collins’ best-seller The Hunger Games. To be clear: I’m not out to criticize Ms. Collins’ book; she wrote a darned fine book that entertained its intended teen readers and their parents alike. Her combination of reality television, Greek myth, and Roman gladiator games was well-written and fun. Buy it. Enjoy. No firebombs through the letter-slot, please (metaphorical or otherwise). No, my point of contention comes from Collins’ portrayal of some of the characters and how they’re portrayed. I’ve no objection to the idea of a totalitarian central government keeping its poorest citizens cowed through poverty, resource deprivation and threats of violence; I think that was nicely prophetic. Rather, I dislike the way that Collins used stock tropes for the baddies who weren’t primary (named) antagonists. Go re-watch a scene or three of the official on YouTube and pay attention to the Generic Star Wars Stormtrooper™ character model. I counted 14 shots in the trailer where generic-looking men in identical spotless white uniforms stood around, motionless and menacing, between the protagonists and the main villain(s). In the scene immediately after the one-minute mark I counted twelve of these guys in one scene. Sure, you could tell that they were played by different extras, but they had less than one-tenth of a personality between them. They were symbols of power, not people. I get why she (and, later, director and screenplay co-writer Gary Ross) did this. They had more than enough characters to explore already. They didn’t have time to spare to dwell on the tertiary background characters. Rather than show us the soldiers as individuals with complex motivations and a range of moral revulsion for the system they represented, we got another Lucas-style ‘clone army’ of identical mooks. Design one action figure then cut-and-paste as needed. The trouble is, the legion of generic thugs populating the background and representing the implied or expressed undermines the overall story’s verisimilitude.

Fahrenheit 451, or Armitage from William Gibson’s Neuromancer. These characters stick with us because while their points-of-view differ from their story’s protagonist’s POV, these differences aren’t really black-and-white, good-versus-evil differences. They’re more nuanced. These characters seem like real people, driven by experiences and ignorance. Characters that made bad decisions that we might make under similar circumstances. So … pause for a moment. Why bring up all this dystopian literature bickering in a business-themed article? Sure, popular literature is profitable and sure, publishing is an interesting industry, but that’s not why I wanted to start here. Rather, there’s a lot that we can (and should) learn from a good dystopian tale that will benefit us at work. Why? Because we’re all in the storytelling business. By that, I don’t just mean fiction writers (like Collins, Bradbury, and Gibson) or non-fiction business writers (like me); I mean everyone holding a leadership role in business. We’re all storytellers, like it or not. In order to motivate, inspire, direct, and coach people, we have to explain to our people what it is that we want them to achieve in terms they’ll understand. The best way to do that is to relate examples through memorable that resonate with the people we’re speaking with. Stories that convey our vision and concerns. Stories that can be passed from person to person with a minimum of distortion. Stories that ‘stick.’

‘Bob.’

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POC is Keil Hubert, keil.hubert@gmail.com Follow him on Twitter at @keilhubert. You can buy his books on IT leadership, IT interviewing, horrible bosses and understanding workplace culture at the Amazon Kindle Store. Keil Hubert is the head of Security Training and Awareness for OCC, the world’s largest equity derivatives clearing organization, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Prior to joining OCC, Keil has been a U.S. Army medical IT officer, a U.S.A.F. Cyberspace Operations officer, a small businessman, an author, and several different variations of commercial sector IT consultant. Keil deconstructed a cybersecurity breach in his presentation at TEISS 2014, and has served as Business Reporter’s resident U.S. ‘blogger since 2012. His books on applied leadership, business culture, and talent management are available on Amazon.com. Keil is based out of Dallas, Texas.