Gotham City had become a hellscape. The city was so corrupt that police officers were robbing falafel stands.
In this chaos, Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered outside of a theatre. Bruce waited years, planning to in turn murder his parents killer, but someone beat him to it.
He was lost. The disapproval of his childhood friend Rachel and failed confrontation with the city’s reigning crime boss Carmine Falcone led him to abandon his old life in pursuit of understanding the criminal find.
He finally found his way, unbeknowingly, to Ra’s al Ghul who taught him the skills he would later use to become Batman.
Or so goes Christopher Nolan’s fantastic film Batman Begins.
Spoiler alert! As Batman, Bruce Wayne ends up bringing some sense of order to Gotham City. His knees seemed worse by the end of it than mine do, which impresses me.
Gotham was fortunate that someone of Bruce’s means and determination rose to the occasion. But would you have picked the way it all played out as your Plan A? Would you aspire to create the conditions that necessitated Batman?
He certainly wouldn’t have. He lost his parents. The main plot point of The Dark Knight was that he didn’t want to be Batman anymore. He wanted to pass the mantle over to the officially-recognized District Attorney Harvey Dent.
Why do you organize your software development organization in a way that necessitates heroes or great leaders emerging? Batmans don’t scale, and they’re in short supply. You risk having a Batman that relishes the role of the hero and fights against your company’s objectives.
Tell me, do you want to depend on heroes emerging, or would you prefer a system of work where you don’t need to light up the bat signal?
We’ll paint the picture of what that looks like over the next few days.
