What a Leader can learn from “The Professor” in La Casa De Papel a.k.a. Money Heist
Money heists are a bad thing. Even if someone is trying to show me the goodness of a bloody crime, it’s wrong. But as a drama and a great piece of art, I will love it and appreciate the effort of all the people who dedicated themselves to making it happen.
But, there are so many things that you can learn from that series of fiction made by talented artists from Spain.
I personally learn a lot of things from the characters in the drama series Money Heist. My favorite character is the professor. He is a focused, well-organized person who used his own talents as well as what he learned from the books that he read and past experiences he gained through his life journey. Even if you lose one of your plans, you have another plan to work on. No one under you will get lost in the journey, as all of them are aware of the plans. He just wants to inform them of the mission code. So he used to teach the team ahead of time with clarity and peace of mind. You can learn from him. Isn’t it?
Even though he worked remotely during the heist, he always lived inside the mission by overlooking all over and analyzing proactively the next thing that could happen. But he never takes control of his hand fully. He explained to his colleagues what he wanted with his mission including several failover plans. He has a leader on location in each heist. So that shows he didn't micromanage the heist. He So monitoring your project in every aspect Sometimes he gets nervous, maybe you could have told me that it's not a characteristic of a great leader. He is also a human being. But what I have seen from such a situation is, that he does not let others see what he feels, rather he encourages the team and focuses them int the goal that they want to achieve. It is a psychological factor that is already being examined and proven that we need some level of nervousness to achieve its goals in maximum performance. That's how you inject your dosage of Adrenaline pumped into you.
You can see this chart to realize what it looks like. For more information please follow this link. What I have seen from the professor is he will reach out to his best decision after he gets aroused.
In one scene, he was getting over-aroused. So he wants to do some exercise to adjust it to the optimal level of decision making. You can check that in the scene where Marsella and Professor went to one of their control centers after they escaped from a trap and Inspector Murillo gets caught by the Police. He will spend some time with his workout and then he will get back to his work. So anytime you get your mind cluttered with a lot of noise or you are in a condition that you cannot make decisions perfectly please attend to some other task that is different and come back with a fresh mind.
Whatever the task he has, he wants to maintain the mood in all the ways he has. For instance, you can notice that he used to work in an abandoned house with a wet floor and surrounded by dirty walls. But all day when started work he used to wear a full suit with clean shoes. He does his workouts daily basis spends his evenings in his favorite restaurants and enjoys life. But he always stuck to the plan. He spends his romantic evenings and all those related to his mission and makes some useful moves there as well.
The professor has his accessories and tools prepared before he starts his mission. So you can see the resource planning in his Zeroth sprint( ;p ) was almost perfect as he had all the chemicals, tablets, or any other computer accessories and the tools that he wanted in place.
Last but not least I like his people management skills. You can see how he got emotional and tried to help him/her when someone was in trouble during the mission. You can see this clearly at the beginning of the second heist. He shows his responsibility for the team even after the end of the first successful heist by assigning a delivery guy who rescues them in any trouble and delivers them back to the professor for help. When Rio got trapped by the police, he gathered all the team members into one place and explained how important it is to rescue Rio as a team. So teamwork as a leader as well as another member of the team is presented nicely from the Professors' character. Other people management skills he has include understanding team members' skills and letting them work on their specialized area to get the maximum benefits from them. Rio the hacker knows electronic stuff and Moscow is good at Mining. The professor wants them on demand when he needs them. He forms his team with diversified skills to function in any condition that all together they can perform as Surgeons at the hospital while doing their mission on the heist. During his training time, he used to party with his team celebrate what they had gained already, and let the team feel at home.
“In this world, everything is governed by balance. There’s what you stand to gain and what you stand to lose. And when you think you’ve got nothing to lose, you become overconfident.” — El Professor
