Panda Po..

Just finished watching the movie Kung Fu Panda.

It is an appropriate movie to illustrate several concepts:

• accomplishing goal
• faith / belief
• focus
• strategies
• play to one’s own strengths

There are more but I will limit to just these for now.

Po has a desire / passion which is genuine. He dreams about it, he spends time researching it, and he is not regretful of it.

He [comically] got himself into a situation where the opportunity opened before him. His goal is within reach. He needs help. Both he and those around him must believe in him and believe in the goal.

Working together with those who influence him skills-wise, those who encourage him, and those who hold him accountable [more if it is possible], he pursues the goal. There are great odds.

His focus is important. He must keep his eyes on the goal, and not waver.

Against the ‘enemy’, his weaknesses abound. He finds a motivation, or his teacher identifies his motivation [food]. Connecting his internal motivation [to be a warrior] with the external motivation [food], he focuses on the learning and makes progress.

However, he cannot overcome the competitor [Tai Lung] simply by training. Time is not in his favour. What he mastered instead is his strengths and he embraces his endowment [which others do not have, including the blank scroll].

While the competitor has every element of success and Po does not have much, Po has weight, great padding, clumsiness, and good sense of humour. His competitor cannot excel because the game is played Po’s way and is not used to the techniques / approach [ie strategies] used by Po, though less elegant than the ‘expected way’.

In other words, Po has the advantage. This is a strategy often recommended in management books, but the movie made it very evident. The competitor [enemy] was defeated because of his own arrogance. In contrast, Po won because he accepted his endowment.

Cool right!