3 Leadership Lessons from Caine’s Arcade

If you haven’t watched the short film Caines Arcade yet, you need to stop what you’re doing right now and take ten minutes that will inspire the rest of your day. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

When I first saw this, I was expecting something completely different. Either a a kid with a disability who was doing something extraordinary or an elementary school super genius who was doing something extraordinary.

Caine is neither one. He’s just an ordinary kid which is what makes his story so great. Ordinary kids are usually pretty uninteresting. But with a three ingredients they can become so much more.

A Big Vision.

Have you ever dreamed of owning a business, making a movie, flying an airplane? So what’s stopping you? For most people their dreams seems too big, too crazy or they don’t have the ____ (time, money, expertise..) to make it a reality. So they never even try. Believing enough in the vision to try is the most important step. When we’re building young leaders we need to be like Nike and encourage them to Just Do It. Even if they’re the only ones who can see what it is they want to achieve.

A Great Mentor

Caine’s Dad offers the perfect blend of encouragement, advice and motivation without doing the one thing most Dad’s (and leaders) are prone to do. Take over a daunting project and do it themselves. Instead, he let Caine work through his own ideas with amazing results.

A Little Patience.

The arcade wasn’t a hit when Caine opened the doors. In fact, he had no idea if and when it would ever be a success. That didn’t matter. What mattered was working on his project each and every day to make it what he wanted it to be.

Sometimes, it only takes one devoted fan to make all your hard work pay off.