Chicago Business

Issue date: 2/16/06 Section: Arts & Entertainment

As films go, "Gladiator" has a pretty good pedigree: it won the Oscar for best picture and Russell Crowe won the Oscar for best actor. It follows the path of Maximus from general to slave to gladiator to icon.

The movie is set in 180 AD, at the height of the Roman Empire. Maximus [Crowe] is the general of the empire's northern armies, but he is accused of treachery and sentenced to death after Commodus [Joaquin Phoenix], son of the emperor, murders his father in a coup to ascend to the throne.

Maximus escapes his executioners and then races to his home to save his wife and son. However, he is too late, for Commodus's troops have already killed them. Despondent, Maximus passes out and when he awakes he finds he has been enslaved and sold to a gladiator school in the outskirt provinces.

Now known as the Spaniard, he excels as a gladiator and goes to Rome. What drives Maximus is the hope that, as the best gladiator, he can earn an audience with Emperor Commodus, at which point he can exact his revenge. And all goes to plan as Maximus overcomes overwhelming odds in the arena.

The climax occurs when Commodus, jealous that Maximus is more beloved by the Romans than he is, challenges Maximus to a one-on-one fight before the throng of spectators. In the end . . . well, I don't want to spoil it for you.

To me, the best part of the movie is a sequence about halfway through. It is only four minutes, but it makes the entire movie. The Spaniard enters the provincial arena with the crowd chanting his name. Therein, he quickly dispatches his six adversaries with lethal precision. Yet, for the last one he gives the crowd something special. The Spaniard kills his last opponent by plunging two swords into his chest, looks up at the crowd, and then pulls the swords out and decapitates the still-standing dead man.



The crowd is stunned by the display of savage brutality. He throws one of the swords into the stands, nearly hitting a spectator, and then admonishes them: "Are you not entertained? Is that not why you are here?" Disgusted by the crowd, he throws his other sword down, spits on the arena's floor, and walks away. The crowd goes berserk, cheering wildly for their new hero.

Afterwards, Proximo, the gladiator school's owner, counsels: "You're good, Spaniard, but you're not that good. You could be magnificent." He then relates his own story of how he was a gladiator who had won his freedom. "I wasn't the best because I killed quickly; I was the best because the crowd loved me. Win the crowd."

Proximo's advice got me thinking about how this applies to us as business school students, as I am wont to do in these columns. Basically, it's an argument of style over substance, something we have been schooled to disagree with since childhood (remember Mom saying, "it's what's inside that counts?"). Yet, I think Proximo has a point which is especially true for us.

Here, we are taught how to build perfect DCFs, perform amazing 4Ps analysis, calculate betas, and the list goes on and on. As different as all the disciplines are, what they share is an exclusive concentration on substance and a seeming disregard for style. But, my experience tells me that this is not how the world works.

As important as the numerical value is, the ultimate product of a stock pitch, a buy or sell recommendation, is not nearly as important as convincing the audience that your pick is the right one. This summer as a consultant intern, I learned that the single most important thing you can do for your client is to build a rapport which engenders trust (I'd share more details, but they are a little sordid; if you want the whole story, find me in the Winter Garden and I'll tell it).

Yet, for all of this, as important as it is to win the client (or the crowd, using the Proximo analogy), how much time do we dedicate to this craft here at school? Nearly all our classes teach us functional skills like those listed above, but do they teach us how to sell the output of those skills to clients? As best as I can tell, LEAD is the only class which ostensibly tries to teach these skills, yet student sentiment as to the effectiveness and usefulness of the LEAD curriculum is far from unanimous.

I certainly don't endorse that we teach only style because substance is important, more so than style. But I do think we need to make sure that we are as good at selling our ideas in incredibly competitive markets as we are at generating them. Without the style, those great valuations, analysis, and pitches may never see the light of day.

In Proximo's words, we need to win the crowd to be great. We, who are about to enter the workforce, salute you.

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