Fast X Your Seatbelts, here's 10 things product managers can learn from the latest Fast and Furious movie
With this summer's premier movie event already happening, you are probably wondering to yourself, "How can I apply some of my learnings of 'family' to my product management practice?" Well, you happen to find yourself in the right place.
Fast Ten (further referred to as Fast X) has stormed through the movie charts and is the summer blockbuster we've all been waiting for. Dom and his family of previously troubled folks-turned-heroes finally have to deal with a person who is the antithesis to the concept of "family" but with his own family baggage. Dante Reyes acts as the direct opposition to Dom in this action-packed flick.
Without further ado, let's get into the things we can learn from the movie:
Photo of Vim Deesel planning out a his next ROADmap
10. "Thank you for showing me the light"
At a poignant moment in the movie, Jakob Toretto yelled to Dom about how he's thankful for turning over from being driven by evil intent. Jakob constantly was driven by his need to come out from under the shadow of Dom in the eyes of their father Jack Toretto. In the end, he came to understand that he didn't need to outshine his brother and to rather settle in to who he is.
We constantly see other Product Managers that are doing all sorts of cool things. What we can learn from this moment is that you don't have to live trying to do more and do better as product managers. Sometimes, you can just settle in to where you are now, being an "ok" product manager since you will never crawl out from under the shadow of Dom.
Not to get ahead of myself, but you’ll likely think to yourself “Thank you for showing me the light” after you finish this blog.
9. Letty Fighting Cipher
In a previous movie, Cipher had killed Elena who was Dom's previous love interest who he learned he had a baby with. Letty and Dom have since been raising the child and he's now 8 and learning how to drift (more on that later). At any rate, Letty and Cipher had an intense fight where Letty got a years-long vendetta solved through fighting.
Coworkers. Sometimes you have a vendetta against a coworker that you've harbored for years potentially or they killed your child's mother. The best case scenario is that you wake up to them on a hospital bed and fight it out.
8. Riding down a dam
Towards the end of the movie, Dom is in the car with his child and is facing down dangers on both sides of the bridge. In this climactic moment, he launches his car down the side of a dam to keep himself and his kid child.
““Find the line, feel the air, and let it fly”
Working in product often puts us in a situation where we are split between two bad decisions. It's important to think out of the box; sometimes the right decision altogether is to take an alternative path, not addressing the original two problems. Sometimes, you just gotta take a leap of fate.
7. Assembling a team
When bringing together a team, it's important that you cover your bases and bring on a team with very diverse skillsets. Each person should bring their own flavor to the team to really help accentuate everyone else but also shine in their own ways.
Every product team really needs to have a good balance of people and here's the ultimate team composition that I came up with; a leader, a second in command who is just as good as the leader but fills the void when necessary, a guy who's really boisterous and referred to as the "face" of the group, a tech person who specializes in cars, a tech person who specialized in hacking, a guy who drives really good and is very charismatic, and occasionally a cop.
6. Teaching young Brian how to drift
One of the lines Dom used when teaching his 8 year old son, Brian, how to drive is "Find the line, feel the air, and let it fly" and I think that encompasses a lot of the good traits of being a product manager, finding the trends, getting a sense of the direction, and then building in that direction. That's the most obvious meaning, but there's another layer I want to call out.
Let the child drive. If you have a child somewhere nearby, let them do whatever they think is the right thing for your product. Kids these days have a better grip about how things work than we as adults do. Hand the reins over and "let it fly".
5. Planning 10 steps ahead
We all saw Dante Reyes had spent a large portion of his life studying and watching Dominic's every move. At every step of the way, Dante was calling out every anticipated course of action that Dom was going to make and had a plan that was always ready for the next step.
What we, as product managers, can learn from this is to always look ahead at what might happen and plan accordingly. Do you need to watch your sworn enemy for years, manipulating them and all the people around them with the sole intent of ruining their life? Maybe.
4. Adapting to shifting scenarios
As events in the movie unfold, there is always a continuous need to shift the game that's being played to match the meta-narrative. The mission changed multiple times and the team did their best to adapt to the ever-shifting currents and whims of the villain, Dante.
In the product management world, sometimes we just need to steer our car into a giant bomb, guiding it away from the Vatican and into the water to have it explode with minimal casualties. Other times, we just need to write better requirements.
Imagine the bomb in this picture as a requirement that popped out of nowhere.
3. Never take Dom's Car
In the movie, the villain is threatening to take everything away from Dom and causing him endless despair, however, he never took Dom's car. Dom's car is an extension of himself and his most valuable tool in his arsenal. We all have our "car" whether it be Jira, Teams, or Excel. It's something we've bled over, carried into battle, and emerged victorious with.
As product managers, we have a golden hammer that we always go to, one that we feel a kinship with. Often, we are left reaching for straws in a situation, but we need to ground ourselves in the fact that we still have our golden hammer. And with that tool, we can accomplish anything we need; perhaps smashing golden nails.
2. Resurrection
Fan favorite, Gisele, returned to the movie in an end-credit scene where she emerged through the floor of ice in a nuclear submarine. The crazy part is that she had died a few movies earlier. On more than one occasion, characters have returned from the dead, revealing that they never actually died when it looked like they did.
How does this apply to Product Management? Great question! As product managers, sometimes we crash and burn with our decisions, product strategy, or anything else in between. This is the opportune time to fake your death - you get to get off scot free. Now, you just need to wait a few years in hiding waiting for the right time to emerge and help your company save the day with some new features or functionality that they haven't considered yet.
1. Family
This is an easy one, but I'll leave the explanation to Dom, "Without family, you have nothing."
You want something, right? Then, you better have a family.
Well, that wraps this article up! Hope you are able to apply some of these learnings to your everyday product management life and be sure to "find the line, feel the air, and let it fly"
Thanks,
-(product) Mgmt
