Letting go of secrets & lies...

What We Did on Our Holiday is a peach of a movie. Building on the winning formula of Outnumbered, where children take a central role in the humorous narrative, this is a film to delight, entrance, move and generally make you laugh out loud. I giggled & chortled through most of this film. And when I wasn't doing either, I was probably shedding a few tears. This is a rich and warm film: as beautiful and powerful as the highlands of Scotland.

The film is about how adults teach children to tell the truth yet all the while drawing them in to our untruths, secrets and lies. Billy Connolly plays the kind of grandfather that every child should have: funny, adoring and above all, truth telling. And you will have to see the film to understand how much the children believe him and believe in him. This film will charm you. (PS and if Andy Hamilton doesn't get a knighthood soon, there is no justice in the honours system!)

This may not be an exact quote, but at one point in the film Gordie (Connolly) says that not all parts of life should be written down as it doesn't help. He is making the point that some things should not be documented. To this I would add, not all things should be recorded either.

Over the weekend I was having a debate about people's rights to privacy and how we are creating a world in which some of our most intimate and now even most tragic parts of human life are subject to youtube scores, facebook likes or retweeting. We need to be sure that what we record (and especially make digital) is going to add to the world not subtract from it. Leadership is about making those fine judgments too: when is it right to move past things and allow them to disappear like a puff of smoke... and when not to do this...

What do you record? What do you let slip away?

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This is the fifty seventh of my 2014 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.