What Stand By Me Can Teach Us About Today’s Workplace
By: Chris Clews
Tags: Movies, Teamwork, 80s, Meetings, Workplace Culture

Credit: Columbia Pictures

“Alright, alright. Mickey’s a mouse, Donald’s a duck, Pluto’s a dog. What’s Goofy?”

It was August of 1986, and I was preparing for my junior year of high school by getting lines shaved into the hair on the side of my head and coloring them green for effect. Yeah, I did that. Mercy.

With the end of summer rapidly approaching, the box office was still awash with blockbusters. Yes, in those days of 80s yore, movies actually stayed in theaters longer than a fortnight. In fact, some continued to sell tickets for months before eventually going the way of the VHS tape and the “coming soon” board with white plastic lettering in your local video store. The Fly, with the gracefully aging Jeff Goldblum; the sci-fi horror classic Aliens; and the wax on, wax off of Karate Kid 2 were amassing massive sales of $3.00 movie tickets. Oh, and lest we forget, the world was being introduced to Maverick, Goose, and Iceman in the American classic Top Gun.

Stand by Me, starring River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Jerry O’Connell, Corey Feldman, and Keifer Sutherland, and directed by Rob Reiner, hit theaters on August 8th of 1986. Originally a short story by Stephen King titled “The Body,” it was included in his book Different Seasons, which also spawned the absolutely amazing Shawshank Redemption.

The coming-of-age comedy drama follows four junior high school boys — Gordie, Chris, Vern, and Teddy — who go on an adventure to find a missing neighborhood kid whose body is supposedly located somewhere near the railroad tracks. The story takes place in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Oregon over Labor Day weekend in 1959. The movie is narrated by Richard Dreyfuss, who is actually the main character Gordie decades later. He’s now a published writer recounting their journey after reading that Chris, played by River Phoenix, has been stabbed to death trying to break up a fight at a fast food restaurant.

It’s Rob Reiner telling a classic Stephen King story, and the result is an introspective and nostalgic look at the friendships we all had during our late-stage childhood years of wonder, adventure, and innocence. It was the time in our lives when every summer day seemed to literally last forever and each school day did last forever. Those were the friendships that taught us many of the lessons we would later use to help us succeed in the workplace. And as Gordie so eloquently states at the end of the movie:

“I never had any friends like I did when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?”

So, what can four brazen and adventurous but innocent and naïve 12-year-old kids teach us about today’s workplace?

There really are no stupid questions.

During their journey, the boys are sitting around a campfire in the woods, discussing the important topics of the day, such as what food you would eat if you could eat only one for the rest of your life — which, according to Vern, is “cherry-flavored Pez . . . no question about it” — and why they never get anywhere on the show WagonTrain. They just “keep on wagontraining,” Gordie says in frustration. And then the conversation turns to Goofy when Gordie asks, “Alright, alright. Mickey’s a mouse, Donald’s a duck, Pluto’s a dog. What’s Goofy?” Teddy replies that “Goofy is definitely a dog,” to which Chris says, “He can’t be a dog. He wears a hat and drives a car.” At this point, Vern chimes in with “God. That’s weird. What the hell is Goofy?”

On the surface, it would seem that Goofy is a dog, and asking what he is would be the definition of a stupid question. But this is where we get our lesson. Sometimes, the question with what appears to be the most obvious answer is actually the best one to ask. It’s the one that ultimately prompts the largest discussion and can be the beginning of a robust brainstorm.

I think back to the first acronym I can recall, which was K.I.S.S. or Keep It Simple Stupid. I’m not even sure that they are allowed to use that in schools anymore, but it always stuck with me. Unless we are in a room full of Neil deGrasse Tysons, when we ask complex questions during a business meeting, they often go unanswered, or worse yet, each person tries to top the other by answering with a consistent string of nonsense buzzwords that would make Lewis Carroll, the author of the Jabberwocky (a poem built on a foundation of nonsense words and phrases), feel a tinge of envy. You know the person — we will call him Buzzword Bob — who says, “Let’s table that while we drill down into these bowling pins and see if we can move the needle with limited bandwidth. But, for now, let’s take it offline, because I need a bio break, so make sure to put a pin in it and ping me later.” Everyone nods in agreement, and you are onto the next topic without actually answering the question.

“Stupid questions” with what appear to be simple answers create an environment in which everyone feels they can contribute and perhaps provide the answer the team or the business needs to move forward. It lessens or even eliminates the impact of Buzzword Bob, and when everyone contributes, you may actually discover that the simple answer isn’t so simple. And this may help you uncover the differentiator, messaging, positioning, or product that will ultimately lead to the success of your team and your business. More importantly, you create an inclusive and open environment that provides you with an opportunity to find your company’s future thinkers and leaders.

So . . . what the hell is Goofy, anyway?

Goals are achieved by embracing individuality over conformity

“We knew exactly who we were and exactly where we were going. It was grand.” — Gordie

When Vern said to the others, “You guys wanna go see a dead body?”, he set them on a course to achieve a goal that would change their lives forever. Innocence would be lost, and the challenges of the real world would become, well, real. But he also created a situation in which four best friends would actually have an opportunity to really get to know each other as they faced multiple challenges throughout their quest. The challenges were vast and varied: the local criminal gang on the same mission to find the body; some very hungry leeches; a train barreling down the tracks, trapping the boys on a bridge hundreds of feet off the ground; the accidental misfiring of a gun; multiple losses of confidence; and something all of us are familiar with from being in teams at work and with our families at home — infighting.

But what they learned along the way was that overcoming these challenges and reaching their goal was ultimately due to their differences rather than their similarities. Yes, they were all 12 years old; yes, they lived in the same small town (insert classic John Cougar Mellencamp song reference here); and yes, they all had a shared sense of adventure, but it was how very different they were from each other that got them to their destination.

Gordie is quiet, smallish, and a creative storyteller. Vern is heavyset, nervous, and very much a follower. Teddy has a quick wit and a quicker tongue but has an angry darkness buried inside him. Chris is the most complex — outwardly confident with leadership qualities but inwardly insecure due to his poverty-stricken and very dysfunctional family. He is highly intelligent but doesn’t realize it. Ultimately, each found something in himself that helped the team face and conquer a specific challenge, which let the members of the group see the true individuality within each other. Because they embraced this individuality over group conformity, the boys ultimately reached their goal and found success.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Healthy businesses and teams embrace the individual. When employees are allowed — better yet, encouraged — to be “exactly who they are” as Gordie stated, it creates an environment in which everyone has a chance to thrive on their own terms. And this is when really great things happen.

One of the coolest examples I’ve seen of achieving a goal while embracing the individual was when a space probe landed on a comet for the first time. There were cameras in the control room, and as you would expect, everyone was cheering and crying. It was an absolutely incredible moment.

But this is what made it super cool: As they panned the room, what you saw was not wonky rocket scientists with pocket protectors and thick bifocal glasses. Not even close. What you saw looked more like the crowd at an alternative rock show. Here was the incredibly diverse group of men and women — some with tattoos, others wearing hoodies and a few with visible piercings — who had just steered a hunk of super-high-tech metal through space and landed it on a comet. Yes, landed on a comet.

I’m guessing that most of us don’t land things on space rocks for a living (although we might sing “Space Age Love Song” by Flock of Seagulls from time to time), but we and our teams do have goals to achieve. And if you find that your team is achieving its goals, but the results are typically of the vanilla variety, thereby not providing breakthrough solutions and leaving all of you consistently underwhelmed, try removing any conformity and embracing the individuality of each team member.

Approach the next goals or strategy session by encouraging everyone to shed their corporate skin, remove their work mask, and be exactly who they are. You might be pleasantly surprised by the outcome, and if nothing else, it will create an atmosphere of acceptance that will make everyone more comfortable with each other and themselves. And that, my friends, as Gordie would say, is “grand.”