Guides
Click on the title to read more about each guide. Most are available for for purchase as an instant download for $5.95 (the rest are coming soon).
Take a look at our FREE Guide, The Wizard of Oz.
Available Now
Bugsy
Your business is going well. You and your partners have earned a tidy profit from a traditional business for many years, and you see nothing that signals change. Engaged in the normal routine of challenges and problem solving, one day you have an idea so different that it will revolutionize the…(click title for more info) More
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead
Where do the great ideas come from? How does a company stay in touch with its markets and with changes in the marketplace? How does a senior manager identify the brightest, most creative and hardworking talent on his or her staff? What are the relative roles of analytical and intuitive knowledge in shaping and expanding product lines or spotting compatible acquisitions. In Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, teenagers find themselves having to survive in the business world and quickly learn to thrive in it…(click title for more info) More
Door to Door
Despite his severe cerebral palsy, Bill Porter beat all of the odds by building a thriving inspirational career selling door to door in Portland, Oregon for J.R. Watkins, a Minnesota-based manufacturer of health remedies, baking products, personal care and household items. The company was started in 1868 by J.R. Watkins, who created and sold an all-natural liniment. The company grew its product line and its sales force and was one of the original door to door sales companies. “The Watkins Man” became synonymous with delivery of all-natural soaps, cleaners, health-care products, spices and extracts, and their original Red Liniment. (Click movie title for more info…) More
Executive Suite
At the Walling home, Mary awakes in the middle of the night to find her husband working at his drawing board. They talk. Walling explains that Grimm will be elected the company’s new president. He and Anderson have talked it through. They are sure they can get the votes and that Grimm will accept. Mary asks if the choice of company president should be made by the stockholders. “The stockholders made their decision with then elected the board of directors,” Walling explains. . .Walling tells her Alderson wanted him to go for the presidency, but he turned it down. He tells Mary that he doesn’t want to “die young at the top of a tower worrying about bond issues and stockholder’s meetings. . .that’s not what I came here for. . .I’m a designer, not a politician. . .I think.” Mary agrees with him. More
Hoosiers
MInute by minute, Hoosiers offers managers great lessons in style, practice, and principle that can be adapted to a broad range of business situations. In addition, Hoosiers offers inspiration. It’s a movie to watch when our team is in the doldrums, facing overwhelming odds against success, or when you, as team leader, are facing moments of self-doubt. Yes, it’s predictable; we know the Huskers will win; we know Ollie will make that free throw; we know Jimmy will make the final shot in the championship game; and we know for sure that before the credits roll, Coach Dale and Myra will be an item. It’s all as corny as an Indiana August, and yet, it’s done so well that it transcends its predictability. The acting is extraordinary, the photography stunning and Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack should on every manager’s music playlist. Listening to it, one hears the pounding of the basketballs, smells the crisp air of late autumn, and knows that whatever project is at hand, success lies ahead. More
Mildred Pierce
The American business climate has changed. There is a general economic downtown: high unemployment with few apparent job opportunities, large corporations contracting their businesses, sending jobs overseas; people have stopped buying products and services because they have less disposable income and don’t see a need for any product currently available. What the economy needs is an injection of innovative thinking and new products. You or your company have a great idea but aren’t sure of the steps involved to get started. You see this current market crisis …(click title for more info) More
Moby Dick
Your boss is nuts!
He’s started using company resources to achieve a personal goal. He has managed to hypnotize the whole staff (except you, of course) into following his lead. He’s offered them big rewards and exacted pledges of loyalty! Why do the owners put up with this? …(click title for more info) More
One, Two, Three
Set in Berlin during the summer of 1960, One, Two, Three is an incisive, fast-paced satire – a Cold War clash of capitalism and communism in the months before the construction of the Berlin Wall. Deceptively light-hearted in tone, the film contains surprisingly serious…(click title for more info) More
Roger & Me
Imagine that you have just handed pink slips to 30,000 workers in one of your company’s oldest factory towns. You have plans to lay off even more. The unions are in an uproar, the town fathers are panicked, the media are barraging you with criticism and a powerful stockholder is questioning …(click title for more info) More
The Big Kahuna
So, your boss is sending you to Wichita, Kansas, for a two-day convention. It sounds like fun. You’ll be working the booth during the day and staffing a small reception in the evening. Now what?
Tradeshows and conventions are a lot of work and require a lot of planning and preparation. Larry, Phil, and Bob could have…(click title for more info) More
The Bridge on the River Kwai
David Lean’s classic 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai is rife with ambiguities. Two army colonels – one a captive British engineer, the other a rigid Japanese prison camp commandant – match wills while attempting to carry out their orders, obey the rules of their respective military cultures…(click title for more info) More
The Devil Wears Prada
Imagine you’ve just landed a job at the world’s most influential fashion magazine. You are second assistant to its editor-in-chief, arguably the most important person in the global fashion industry. It is a job “a million girls would die for” but you may not keep it for long because your hard-driving boss sometimes has insanely sky-high expectations, and people who fall short of them don’t last long. How do you survive? And, what can you learn from this powerful and monomaniacal dictator? (Click movie title for more info…) More
The Story of Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell, the Scots-born inventor of the telephone, ranks with Thomas Edison as one of the most creative minds of all time. Bell’s life and researches illustrate the synergistic qualities required to connect seemingly unrelated scientific concepts and link them to produce technologies that change the world. Like Edison, with whom he competed for patents on several ideas, Bell had a keen sense of business which served him well not only in getting his ideas launched in the marketplace, but also in protecting them from encroachment…(click title for more info) More
The Wizard of Oz
You’ve probably seen The Wizard of Oz a gazillion times. (If you haven’t, what planet are you from?) The American Film Institute rated Oz the sixth-best film ever made. We think it’s also one of the Top 10 leadership training films of all time, a fact recognized years ago by Lou Tice, one of the nation’s top corporate…(click title for more info) More
Tucker: The Man and His Dream
So you want to be an entrepreneur? Get ready for long hours, cash-flow problems, supply shortages, the loss of your friends and, possibly, your family. Prepare to have your idea copied, your business practices imitated and your nights robbed of sleep. Key employees…(click title for more info) More
Twelve O’Clock High
Balancing the interests of the company you work for with the interests of the people who work for you can be one of the toughest jobs you’ll deal with as a manager. Being too distant from those you supervise can cost you their commitment and loyalty; being too close can lead you into the traps of overprotecting employees, reduced productivity and conflicts of interests between employee interests…(click title for more info) More
Wall Street
Director Oliver Stone dedicated this 1987 film dealing with Wall Street greed and redemption to his father, himself a stockbroker. In the movie, a bright young broker falls under the spell of a master market manipulator, the unscrupulous Gordon Gekko. Don’t expect fairness or balance in Stone’s film…(click title for more info) More
Working Girl
You work hard for your money but you know you are underemployed. You’re still stuck in the clerical track, despite the hours you’ve spent earning a business degree in night school. The people you work for demean you by viewing you as “only an assistant” and add insult to injury by treating you as a sex object. Fed up, you quit, hoping to find a better opportunity with a firm that will appreciate you for your talents and your drive. You need to find an employer who will treat you and your ideas with respect; one that will give you an opportunity to break out of the clerical ghetto, through the glass ceiling and into the life you…(click title for more info) More
Zulu
The defense of Rorke’s Drift, Natal, during The Zulu War is one of the most famous battles in British military history. In late January 1879, British forces at Isandhlwana suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Zulus. Buoyed by their victory and armed with rifles seized…(click title for more info) More