Camel lady

Tracks was one of those delightful films that I stumbled into, almost by accident, having not read any of the reviews or crits beforehand. It is beautifully humble film with no pretensions and quietly tells a moving story of a young woman who decides to trek from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean with her dog and several camels. The cinematography is understated until near the end when it explodes into a sea of colour. And not much happens in the story but there again, it kind of does.

We are led to the view that this journey could be about the woman in question wanting to walk out her demons, having decided that only the kind of 'aloneness' you can get in huge desert will help her to do this. There are other characters who flit in and out of her journey, mostly to her annoyance (but not ours). It is a wide and wise film with a big sky and a big belief that we all have a journey like this inside us.

The main character has a very treasured compass. Without her compass, she would get quickly lost in a sea of sand and scrub. But that isn't the main reason why she values the compass so highly: we learn why during the film. The compass has a worth that extends well beyond its utility.

Sometimes leaders can be very functional and only rate objects, (or work methods, organisational structures etc) for their contributions to productivity & performance. However wise leaders recognise that the value of these artifacts & features of the organisation may well include high emotional value and only makes changes with great circumspection.

What are the totemic features of your organisation that you only change with great care?

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This is the twenty seventh of my new series of blogs about leadership ideas to be found in the movies of our time. You can read here as why I am doing this. Please subscribe to this blog if you want to read more. Thanks. Click the label 'film' to see all the others.