Baking cakes in the future

Cake is an uncompromising and raw look at pain and grief. So it is not your happiest kind of film and it certainly isn't a date movie.

It features Jennifer Aniston as you have probably never seen before: in anguish, saggy clothes and no make-up for most of the film. It was rumoured that she was in line for an Oscar nomination but was pipped by someone else. I am not sure her performance was of Oscar standard, but she acts it extraordinarily well. One day, one day, she will shake of the ghost of Rachel.

But go see this movie for its authenticity, narrative & humour which are woven together into a moving mix. It works well and certainly a key ingredient in the mix is the long suffering but deeply loyal & compassionate maid, Sylvana.

This film is a lesson in how difficult it is to 'move on' as the vernacular dictates that we should. Some things (and we eventually learn what it is in this movie) are just so extraordinarily hard to move on from...

Sometimes leaders imagine that people can easily let go of the past and embrace the the future that the leader wants to take them towards. But it isn't so easy. It also about people letting go of the future they thought they were going to have as well as habits and feelings of the past... Great leaders recognise this and build it into their change management plans.

How can you help people let go of hoped for futures?

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This is the seventy seventh of my 2014/2015 series of blogs about leadership ideas to be found in the movies of our time. You can read here as why I began doing this (with an update at the end of 2014). Please subscribe to this blog if you want to read more. Thanks. Click the label 'film' to see all the others.