BCBusiness

60 BCBusiness 2016 entertainment? You bet. And thanks to the success of The Apprentice, Donald Trump was able to take the reality TV aesthetic into politics too. "I use lm clips a lot in my executive leadership programs," says professor Daniel Skarlicki of UBC's Sauder School of Business. "They are rich with visual context and can provide a ve-minute scene where the students can draw some business-related learning insights from the case." He quite liked The Social Network: "People have always had a romance with leadership, be it in books or lm. They become infatuated with very powerful leaders." Business superstars are rarely if ever portrayed like triumphant sports heroes. Their victories are usually pyrrhic—they truly win when they realize the emptiness of their success. "I like Steve Jobs because it reveals that he was extremely unkind and selsh," Skarlicki says. "He used a lot of people to get where he did. It draws out an important insight on human psychol- o™y—that we like to punish people who violate moral and social norms, but we give them a wide latitude when they are high performers." Why is it that popular culture prefers to highlight the dark side of business? Is it Hollywood's pronounced liberal bent? Or is it the pervasive suspicion that, unlike a well-refereed football game, the successful business mogul is seen as the one who refuses to play by the rules? While Skarlicki doesn't buy into every Hollywood portrayal of high nance—"Wolf of Wall Street was a porn movie with a little bit about a crook," he says—neither does he feel movies are too hard on busi- ness. "Not at all. I think that these lms could be much harder on businesses than they currently are," he insists. "One docu-lm that does it right is The Corporation by Joel Bakan. He has harnessed the skills of movie-making to help the world see what is going on." When using lm to demonstrate leadership Skarlicki does not restrict himself to business-themed lms. "Lean on Me provides lots of leader- ship examples, as does Elizabeth and Ghandi," he points out. As for the TV shows, Skarlicki nds them interesting—if somewhat mislead- ing. "I am surprised that these pro- grams are so popular," he says. "I watch them with great interest because we teach entrepreneurship at UBC and that is what these guys are doing. What is not well known is that there are few deals on Shark Tank and Dragons' Den that actually close. The sharks are motivated to provide a persona that they are aggressive winners, so they say yes a lot. But they also retain the right to walk away, and they walk away a lot." "Films overlook the ordinary moments where very little is happen- ing," Skarlicki says. "And there are many more of these than the exciting decisions and controversy. Most about business is much more benign." As in the Western, it is the mavericks and the outlaws that people remember. Aaron Sorkin is never likely to write a script about Warren Bu•ett. Justin Trudeau "had a robust speechwriting staff " (Maclean's, Oct. 22, 2015) J a r g o n W a t c h once that would have suggested a group of physically sturdy people. now it presumably refers to their strong writing skills, but who knows? When "robust" is used to describe pretty much everything (a robust trade agenda, robust savings, a robust picture of hous- ing market conditions, a robust progressive opposition), its meaning becomes, well, weak. Powerful expression is possible without reaching for "robust": it doesn't show up at all in searches of the King James bible, shakespeare's works or Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. ro . bust [from robus, robur: oak, strength]

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