How I Use Oppenheimer To Grow My Business
Collect your wins like marbles.
Oppenheimer is one of my favourite films of 2023.
It has also provided me a valuable analogy on how to to approach business goals.
In case you haven’t seen it, the movie cleverly employs a plot device in which scientists incrementally introduce marbles into both a fishbowl and a wine glass, symbolizing the gradual advancement toward the creation of the first-ever atomic bombs.
The explanation as to why does it happen and what’s the science behind it is a long one. Here’s a brilliant post by Jeremy Whitlock that does deep dive on the topic.
But the crux of it is this: The scientists needed to collect a certain amount of uranium or plutonium to make the bombs. But the process was incredibly complicated. In the post, Whitlock described it as: Imagine filling a bucket of sand one grain at a time, with tweezers. It took several years and a large team of brilliant people for them to have enough.
And that’s where the marbles came in.
Marbles symbolised their progress; the slow process it took to achieving their big goal.
Business is complicated. It takes a hell lot of patience and lonely planning to achieve anything worthwhile.
But whether it’s building a new vertical or growing sales or introducing new systems, business managers and leaders have to think long term. The goals can’t just be to improve the sales in the next quarter or maintain the operations. Rather, a vision needs to be realised.
That’s how real growth happens.
And Oppenheimer’s marble scenes are a perfect analogy for that.
Our business goals are empty vessels. And our job is to fill them with marbles consistently. Whether we are motivated or not, we need to keep advancing one marble at a time until they are full.
The process takes time (as all things worthwhile do). But if we just keep adding to the stack, there will come a day when we have achieved what we set out to do.
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