In-House Counsel

Lessons From The Movie 'Oppenheimer'

The scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer commanded respect by earning it and had a very different view of how people should work together across disciplines and not hierarchies.

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nuclear option mushroom cloudAwards season is finally over here in Tinseltown. There are, depending on how you count them, at least three major Hollywood award events between the first of the year and last weekend, which culminated in the Oscars.

The big Oscar winner was the movie “Oppenheimer,” which won seven awards. I had hesitated to watch it due to its 180-minute length, but the movie, based upon the book “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, mesmerized me from the opening scene. A column in a recent Wall Street Journal looked at “Oppenheimer” through a leadership lens. The headline in Ben Cohen’s Science of Success column was “Management Secrets From the Man Who Built the Bomb.” I had never thought about “Oppenheimer” in that way, but Cohen spurred me to think differently about the man.

As Cohen explains it, J. Robert Oppenheimer was a 38-year-old theoretical physicist when he was chosen to be the director of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos during World War II. The job: to build an atomic bomb before the Nazis did. Although people thought he couldn’t “run a hamburger stand,” it turned out that he was the perfect project director. Why? Cohen provides three reasons.

First, Oppenheimer was able to recruit the best to join him in the New Mexican desert. When he decided who he wanted to join him, he was relentless in his pursuit. Whatever it took in his quest to get that person, he took it. Oppenheimer saw the makings of future star physicists, even if they weren’t yet stars.

Just like in any other situation — and that certainly includes the legal profession — hiring the right person is an art, not a science, and selecting the right team was essential for Oppenheimer, just as it is for us. Hiring is the most important job for a manager. Get it right and the sky can be the limit; get it wrong and the cost is too high. Oppenheimer never let go until he had assembled the team he knew could get the job done. And he didn’t have any of the tools we take for granted today to make recruiting easier.

The second characteristic that Cohen says Oppenheimer had was the ability to communicate. He had an uncanny ability to facilitate communications among the members of the various teams he had working at Los Alamos. Unlike so much of today’s world, which, intentionally or not, is siloed, Oppenheimer was able to bring people together by forging consensus. It wasn’t always easy, but at the end of the day, the teams agreed on the best way to proceed.

Unlike the military way of “command and control,” Oppenheimer’s way was to get the best out of each team member, without giving orders. Unfortunately, the management way of “command and control” is not just limited to the military. We see it all around us in the way that people are treated in the workplace. Do they have voices? Are they free to express their opinions, even if unpopular, without fear of retaliation? Are they allowed to contribute what they think is the best way, even if it flies in the face of other opinions? Or are they ignored, belittled, or even disciplined? Look around and tell me what you think.

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What also set Oppenheimer apart was his wide range of interests and his ability to communicate with people not just on the work at hand, but on a swath of topics. While he hired people who were specialists, as a leader, Oppenheimer was a generalist. It’s analogous to in-house needs. Every business needs subject matter experts (SMEs), but the need for in-house counsel whose knowledge is like a saucer, broad but not necessarily very deep, is also there. It is often those who can spot the issues, point teams in the right directions, and let the SMEs be SMEs.

Lastly, Cohen remarks that Oppenheimer was a person who collaborated. He did not like organization charts, he commanded respect by earning it, and he had a very different view of how people should work together across disciplines and not hierarchies. The people he recruited brought different ideas and skills to the table. It was the free flow of ideas that allowed team members to consider a range of alternatives before Oppenheimer would make a decision. That safe space Oppenheimer gave everyone to collaborate was critical to the project’s success.

Everyone may define the “success” of the Manhattan Project differently. Oppenheimer pulled together a disparate team of brainiacs at a critical time in our history and encouraged them to collaborate. Good leadership is good leadership, regardless of the profession and what we may have thought then and may think now of the finished product.

old lady lawyer elderly woman grandmother grandma laptop computerJill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.

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