Rita Vrataski

In 2014, via Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt and The Edge of Tomorrow, I discovered Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need is Kill. The book was inspired by the video games that Sakurazaka loves and his realisation that gaming is essentially just repeating the same process a million times until you’ve mastered it. Just like novel’s protagonist Keiji Kiriya, I found myself intrigued by its mysterious heroine Rita Vrataski. After alien terraformers, called Mimics, invade the Earth, humanity finds itself losing its battle for survival until Rita falls into a time loop which enables her to become a super soldier. She lives the same battle 211 times and evolves into a killing machine. However, that’s not the whole story. The loop itself isn’t the answer. Rita’s approach to rapid iteration is what saves mankind.

Hollywood’s blockbuster movie makes the mistake of assuming that simply repeating the same day was enough for Rita Vrataski to become humanity’s saviour. It ignored the fact that Rita succeeds because she is uniquely qualified to take advantage of the time loop. If someone else had accidentally fallen into the loop, they might not have developed into Rita Vrataski. Where Rita was crazy enough to put down her guns and pick up a battle axe, they might have stuck to machine guns and never discovered the way to defeat Mimics is to use medieval combat, a weapon that outlasts the enemy. Where Rita was determined enough to live through the same day 211 times without becoming insane, a less dedicated person might have quit and stopped trying to solve the problem.

The point is that for your business, team or idea simply iterating isn’t enough. Adopting startup culture isn’t enough. If you aren’t prepared to embrace the advantages of that way of working, you’ll continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. Instead, you need to also adopt the qualities of Rita Vrataski.

Driven — You are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. If 211 iterations are required, so be it.

Innovator — You are willing to think differently and experiment every day until you find the right approach. You actively challenge traditional thinking. Where others take guns you take an axe into battle.

Rigorous — You willing to learn from successes and failures in an unbiased way and quickly adapt refine your strategy. You constantly upgrade your capabilities.

Hero — You are willing to stand out. You wear red to draw the enemy’s fire and place yourself in danger for the good of your team. You lead from the front and fight the battles ahead to clear a path for your colleagues.