The 8 Mile Method

An unexpected source of management inspiration I’ve mentioned more than several times recently: “have you seen the ending to the movie 8 Mile?”

Caution: 8 Mile plot spoilers ahead. In my defense, 8 Mile was released in 2002 so if you haven’t watched it by now, I doubt it’s in your Netflix queue.

The premise of 8 Mile is that Eminem (Jimmy, aka B-Rabbit) is a poor, white, blue collar, motor factory worker trying to make a name for himself in Detroit’s underground battle rap scene. His closest friends recognize his immense talent, but his recurring stage fright makes him unable to perform in front of a raucous and increasingly skeptical audience. The antagonist of the movie is played by Anthony Mackie (Papa Doc), a strong battle rapper and leader of an opposing crew. One significant difference between the two groups is obvious economic disparity, as Anthony Mackie’s crew drives around in a Cadillac Escalade and Eminem’s crew drives around in a beaten down Oldsmobile. Living in a trailer park with his mom and daughter, Eminem’s economic situation is a source of shame that he does his best to keep hidden. He knows music is one means to greater financial mobility but he’s perpetually “working on his demo.”

The ending of the movie pits Eminem against each member of Papa Doc’s crew in a series of rap battles. Eminem finally overcomes his stage fright to take down each member of the crew one by one. In the final scene, having finally reached defending champion Papa Doc himself, they flip a coin to determine that Eminem goes first. I’ll let Wikipedia explain the rest:

Going first, Jimmy preempts Papa Doc’s potential insults, acknowledging his own “white trash” roots and difficult life. He ends his battle repudiating Papa Doc’s image as a thug by exposing his privileged background; having attended a private school in a wealthy suburb and living in a stable, two-parent household, and the fact that his name is Clarence. Embarrassed and with nothing to say in rebuttal, Papa Doc hands the microphone back to Future, conceding the battle.

Here’s the scene on YouTube. All expected content warnings apply: this is an R rated movie from 2002, centered around battle rap, starring Eminem.

Even in high school I found Eminem’s approach in that final battle both unexpected and brilliant. B-Rabbit’s strategic insight? The best way to quell a potential rebuttal is to preemptively address its main points.

A reasonable question: “why on Earth would I ever mention this movie in a professional setting?” The answer is because this insight applies in an unexpectedly large number of real-world work situations:

• I’m writing a long-term strategy for our team, and it requires trade-offs that people might be upset about.
• We need to work within the codebases of another team, and they hate it when other teams touch their code.
• We need to collaborate with another team to accomplish our highest priority work stream, but they won’t do it because they’re too busy with their priorities.

Enduring compromises are win-win

Years ago I read Getting To Yes, which explains the principles of successful negotiation. One of the key principles of the book is “successful negotiations are mutually beneficial” - it’s never prudent to win a short-term negotiation at the cost of a long-term relationship. “Putting something over on someone” is extremely short sighted and ultimately self-defeating. In service of long term mutual benefit, there are four key components to successful negotiation:

1. Separate the People from the Problem
2. Focus on Interests, Not Positions
3. Invent Options for Mutual Gain
4. Insist on Using Objective Criteria

While 2+3 are not necessarily great advice for a rap battle, I find thematic similarities between these points and Eminem’s winning tactics. At their core they both ask, “forget what I want in the vacuum of my own interests - what does this other party really want? And if I anticipate those desires, how does that contextualize the plan for my behavior?”

A similar concept is to explore the Steel Man Argument. In contrast to Straw Man arguments, which center on bad faith and superficial interpretations of a viewpoint, a Steel Man Argument focuses on addressing the strongest rebuttals against a stated position. In a work context sometimes the outcomes are conveniently binary (i.e. a “go”/”no go”), but more often than not you must find a pragmatic solution that grapples with competing incentives and tradeoffs. In this case, a successful “8 Mile Method” is to seek the Steel Man compromise. In light of the other party’s incentives, what are the pain points you can anticipate to make a “yes” as likely as possible?

Going back to the real-work examples:

I’m writing a long-term strategy for our team, and it requires trade-offs that people will be upset about.

Does your strategy explicitly address its most likely critiques? If you’re proposing a significant deviation from the status quo, are you substantiating that deviation with compelling quantitative and qualitative outcomes? “If we do [x] we end up at [compelling future state], and if we keep doing what we’re doing we end up at [worse/status quo future state].” How does the narrative of your proposed future state better appeal to the long-term incentives of your stakeholders, even if it’s more painful to pursue in the short term?

We need to work within the codebases of another team, and they hate it when other teams touch their code.

Think about it: why do they hate it when other teams touch their code? Is it because they’ve been burned in the past before with haphazard changes to their codebases that they’ve been left to maintain? (Side note: this is literally always the reason.)

Can you propose workflows to preempt those concerns? For example: can you ensure that all of your incoming PRs are well documented and tested? Can you ensure that your code is sufficiently silo’d so that when it breaks, the rest of the codebase degrades gracefully and your team is paged instead of theirs?

We need to collaborate with another team to accomplish our highest priority work stream, but they’re too busy with their priorities.

The other team is so time constrained that they can’t dedicate the coordination / IC hours to your work stream. Can you minimize the their time commitment while still benefiting from their experience and context? Can your team assume nearly all of the IC work, and limit their involvement to planning / periodic consultation / PR approvals? Alternatively, is there a way for you to position your work in alignment with one of the other team’s higher level goals, thereby increasing the priority of your request?

No team wants to be a blocker, especially to good outcomes. They become a blocker because they don’t have viable alternatives. Your job as a leader is to give them alternatives.

From 🤷🏻‍♂️ to action

There is a concept in psychology called the Locus of Control. In short, the locus of control is the existential question of how much an individual attributes outcomes to external factors vs internal factors (i.e. their own behaviors). I’m not qualified to opine on where people should sit on this spectrum (and personally I think “luck” has an oversized impact on so many of life’s outcomes), but I do often encounter situations at work where I see people give up too soon. They encounter the friction of bureaucratic process, pre-defined planning cycles and roadmaps, or even checked out coworkers, and throw their hands up in frustration and stop trying.¹ To be frustrated in these situations is often just and reasonable, but frustration alone doesn’t change outcomes.

People often have more agency to change work outcomes than they think. Your team appears to be blocked by opinions, emotions, or priorities. How can you turn progress away from what you can’t control (other people’s behavior) to something you can (your behavior)? Are you truly looking at all of the possible angles to get to a solution, or is your frustration cutting that analysis short? The 8 Mile Method will force you to enumerate realistic alternatives.

Footnotes