Lessons from ‘Down and Out’

The recently aired movie ‘Down and Out’ is reminiscent of how the merriest comedies could emanate from the bitterest facts. Let’s review six lessons for your career, from the well-structured screenplay in part 2 of the film’s review.

The movie comes in two parts, the first half in which Iraj, the lead character, behaves arrogantly toward others; and the second, when he is humbled. Drawing a parallel with your own life, you might want to consider the following tips to avoid Iraj’s mistake.

In the previous part, the first two tips were discussed. Here’s the next two.

THREE

Monitoring your rivals is of utmost importance.

Besides pride, another mistake that caused Iraj to lose his job was that he would never monitor his competitors; actually, he used to underestimate the power of his rivals, and would never spend time to study the situation. If he carefully monitored his employer’s son and learned about his skills, he would not suddenly face a serious player, for whom he had no plans devised.

Monitoring the market is important to the success of firms; they need to keep an eye on the competition to prepare scenarios vis-à-vis their latest developments, updating the plan B frequently. This causes you, at times, to change your priorities.

FOUR

It’s you who creates job security for you.

One of the nagging concerns of people who plan to be hired by a firm is whether their job security is guaranteed. The concept of job security is nowadays changing in pioneering and top rated organizations; they don’t provide their staff with anything called job security, but rather, it’s the employees who need to show performance levels that guarantee their future career. Actually, people who just think of a promised payroll end of the month, without considering the firm’s progress, will be unable to count on a secured position in the future.

As depicted in the movie ‘Down and Out’, Iraj supposes his job position to be guaranteed, and that’s why he resists people’s opinions about his plans, and fails to even show a bare minimum level of flexibility.

Stay with this review in the future episode.

MF/MF