In a post on Harvard Business Review’s blog site, Luca Baiguini provided some helpful insights on time management, setting priorities, and being strategic based on lessons he learned from The Incredibles. 

I got several take-home messages from Luca’s post. Among them:

• Syndrome, the villain of the story, had a particular line that was the fulcrum for the entire film: “…when everyone's super, no one will be.” Luca says, “… on a team where everything is urgent nothing will be. By the same token, on a team where everything is important, nothing will be. As the evil Syndrome perceived, only the relative level counts.” By extension: When everything is a number one priority, nothing will be.

• “…a leader has to distinguish what is super and what is not, in both the relative and the absolute way, both in terms of time (what is super today [might] not be super tomorrow) and within of the organization (what is super in a part of it [might] not be super in another [part]).” Put another way, to be strategic, you have to determine what is genuinely important and recognize that what’s the number one priority today might not be the number one priority later on. In addition, what the number one priority for you, might not be number one to someone else.

• “…the third, very important lesson: don't reveal your plan to the enemy! This caused the defeat of Syndrome.” While I agree with Luca that this is an important lesson, this was not what caused Syndrome’s defeat. The “supers” had authentic, innate talents; Syndrome, on the other hand, was something of a poser. Once he was stripped of his mechanical special effects, he had nothing left to work with. Along with his super-sized ego and a wardrobe malfunction, his lack of talents and dependence on technology proved his undoing.

 Ultimately, you can defeat the enemies of your productivity in much the same way that the Incredibles defeated Syndrome.

• The real number one priority is relationship. Everybody has different talents and powers. By combining forces, those become synergistic and unstoppable.

• Reflect on what’s gone before and draw lessons from the past. Mr. Incredible thought back to the first time he took on the dastardly Omnidroid to ascertain what it’s greatest weakness was.

• Be authentically yourself and grow from your strengths. As the story unfolds, Dash and Violet learn to leverage their superpowers to make greater and more significant contributions. Part of the reason they’re able to do that is because they’re no longer trying to hide their talents and simply fit in with the less-super world around them.

Like the Incredibles, once you vanquish a major foe, you’re likely to encounter another one. And that’s what sequels are for.