The Wolf of Corporate Communications!

I’ve been taking a Corporate Communications class this winter semester that have made some serious damage to my brain (jajaja). Since day one, we’ve been discussing how our personal culture and the environment we grew in mold our way to communicate in our professional environments.

I know this doesn’t sound like nothing new, It totally sounds logical, but the discoveries we’ve made in class, along with the differences we’ve found comparing our dominican way to communicate to the north American way, is a whole other topic to discuss in another post.

What I want to talk about is how this class made me notice something I wouldn’t have noticed before while watching The Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah! I’m talking about that movie for which Leonardo DiCaprio totally deserves the Oscar for Best Actor.

The thing is that, seeing it from my new point of view, the main character, Jordan, totally owes his success to his amazing communication skills. And the movie encompasses everything I’ve learned in class about what Corporate Communications is all about:

Lesson #1 – Communicate effectively: While working on the “pennies” stock market, Jordan convinces (or fools if you want to say) its clients to support startups companies with no merit.  I’m not praising the fact that he lies, but the fact that he clearly tells his listeners what he wants them to do, how and why, with clear guidelines and measurable amounts.

Lesson #2 – Empower your employees and communicate your vision:  Once Jordan gathered his soon to be partners in crime, he believed they could do a lot more than what they even knew they could. He saw further. He knew they had abilities that were meant to be exploded, so he pushed them. But he was not a careless demanding boss, au contraire, he carefully taught them how he did things, and how he wanted them to do things.  Every day he sat with them to show them, to practice with them, to make them feel involved, until they all got it and assumed it.

Lesson #3 – Give them something to believe in: Jordan also acknowledged that there was something missing. His company had no structure, no material evidence to turn to. That’s when he created a name and a logo of a company that they would once be proud to work in, Stratton Oakmont, and he worked his words to make them believe so.

Lesson #4 – Implant the company’s culture: Let’s say it like it is. Jordan was twisted, had no moral and the kinky things done in his company were not to copy at all. But being crazy was part of its company’s culture as well, and he was the first supporter of all the craziness. Everything was a surreal, depraved party at Stratton Oakmont, and whoever felt like it was to much, needed to find another place to work, because that was “the way they did things there”, which is the simplest definition of what a company’s culture is. And he was himself the personified icon of what his company was all about.

Lesson #5 – Communicate with your employees: Stratton Oakmont’s employees were Jordan’s sidekicks. They knew that what they were doing was not legal. They knew his boss was sick of his mind. They knew the tax authorities were after them. They knew everything. Because everything was told loud and clear from the mouth of the boss, using a microphone placed in the middle of the open office. Jordan used that microphone everyday; he announced his own “almost” retirement. He delivered the good and the bad news. So his employees got to see his face everyday and he was no stranger or unreachable leader to nobody.

These lessons are the main reason why I liked the movie overall. It is overloaded with drugs and nudity (which I found excessive and could’ve been cut a little to reduce its length). It made me wonder if all this is really going on outside my world bubble, and made me feel a little sad for people. But I can’t deny it was a great movie and one worth to see.