My kid loves anime.  And as such, we spent the weekend together watching Netflix’s new live action show One Piece (Netflix’s current number 1 show in the U.S.A).  The show follows the lead character Monkey d. Luffy and his pirate crew as they go on adventures.  Luffy is called the straw hat pirate because he wears a straw hat.  Luffy is a very different kind of pirate hero:  he mostly is just a kind-hearted silly person that wants the best for people around him. He gets himself into ridiculous situations, but solves them every time. As my wife said, “He gets things done.”

I thought about it for a moment.  He does get things done, should we be taking Luffy seriously?  I chuckled for a bit and then took seriously for a moment, what makes Captain Monkey d. Luffy such successful as a leader?  I started doing some brain storming.  I found the ideas that make Luffy a good manager began to resonant with me.  These are things I try to do (but usually fall short). I started writing them down and thinking maybe we are on to something here.  This might be a new playbook for middle managers.  Let’s call it the Straw Hat Management style:

• Be authentically you all the time – we spend so much time worrying about what other people think about us.  It doesn’t matter, just be who you are.  If you are silly, be silly.  At the minimum you will make people smile.  But there is so much more upside when you are authentically you.  When you allow yourself to be yourself at work, it creates a trusting environment where you empower the people around you to be themselves too.  This means less time worrying about work politics and more time getting things done. 
• Make lofty goals, tell everyone about them, and then pursue them – At the start of the show, Luffy is a nobody.  And yet he tells everyone he wants to be King of the Pirates.  People chuckle at first, but once they see his strength, drive, and desire they begin to take him more seriously. It seems silly but having lofty goals shows people you are more than just a middle manager trying to get home for the day.  It also empowers your teammates to set lofty goals and to peruse them with zeal – which is great for business.
• Stand up for your ethics – Luffy typically does what is right, even if it takes him away from his goal.  The world is in a bad place right now, we need people all over to stand up and do the right thing and fight hard to make the world a better place.
• Recruit Good People – One of the exciting parts of the show is that Luffy builds an amazing pirate crew adding new characters as they go along.  He inspires these people to join his crew.  He actively searches people out with powerful skillsets.  But the skills someone brings to the table isn’t enough.  He wants to know is this person a good person at their core.  Its not just how well they perform, but how much he trusts them. Trust is so important when building a team.
• Love and Inspire – Rather than manage his crew, Luffy encourages and inspires.  His crew does herculean things because their love for each other and doing the right thing rubs off on one another. 

The real world is not all fairytales and cartoons.  Hard, difficult things need to be done, often by the very middle managers that I am speaking too.  The fact is that our world is on fire, the temperatures keep going up, storms of the century are happening every other week, the environment is in such a terrible place, and we are at each other’s throats on cable news, social media, and at protests.  And I wake every morning wanting to change the world to make it a better place.  But I am a little nobody middle manager in runaway global capitalism, what can I do about it? 

Be Luffy!  Stand up for the people around you, your teammates, your customers, and everyone that is affected by your actions.  Do the right thing! Every little step in the right direction will have an impact and if we all stand up together the impact will be shared and inspire others.  Sure being successful matters and we still have to pay the bills, but if we stick together and work hard to do the right thing, in the long run our world will be a much better place.