When McKinsey & Company's Playbook Came to Life in a Blockbuster Movie Scene

For the past several weeks I’ve been exploring the work of Eric Lamarre and McKinsey & Company, one of the most influential global consulting firms known for shaping strategies at some of the world’s largest organizations.

Their book “Rewired: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI” distills years of research and field experience into a practical approach for driving transformation. While their strategies are often aimed at corporate audiences, I have been looking at them through the lens of mission-driven, community-focused organizations—places where digital and AI strategies serve trust, service, and tangible impact.

In my own work, I’ve seen that same pattern play out. When teams take the time to fully ground themselves before moving forward—whether that means clarifying the vision, aligning on priorities, or committing to a shared path—success feels far more achievable. The conversations are deeper, decisions are clearer, and momentum builds in a way that carries everyone forward.

I remember one project where someone asked if we really needed to spend so much time on preparation before building. I understood the interest in hitting the ground running, but I had also seen what happens when you skip those grounding stages — cracks appear later in ways that are harder and costlier to fix. I’ve also seen the opposite: when teams invest that time up front, even ambitious or complex projects gain the stability to stand and the clarity to succeed. Without it, even the most well-intentioned efforts can falter before they have a chance to make their full impact.

That contrast between a strong foundation and a shaky one stayed with me. It made me more attuned to the different ways we can learn about what makes complex or innovative projects succeed or fail.

In the book Rewired, Eric Lamarre and his colleagues at McKinsey & Company name three anchors that keep transformation steady: vision, alignment, and commitment. Vision is the shared picture of where you’re going and why it matters. Alignment is the way people, processes, and priorities move in sync toward that vision. Commitment is the staying power to keep going when challenges and competing priorities pull at the edges. These anchors are essential for keeping any major initiative grounded and moving forward.

While you might expect to see examples of vision, alignment, and commitment play out in a boardroom, case study, or leadership retreat, I came across them in a completely different place—one of my favorite streaming apps.

It happened while watching Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. I wasn’t in work mode. I wasn’t looking for a professional analogy. I was just letting my mind rest and enjoy a story. But the connection landed anyway. It reminded me that lessons about leadership and transformation are not always tucked inside formal business contexts. They are all around us, in the stories and environments we immerse ourselves in, if we notice them.

In Rise of the Beasts, the story centers on the Transwarp Key, an ancient artifact that can open portals across time and space. The Maximals—a race of beast-like Transformers—have been guarding it for generations, knowing that if it falls into the wrong hands, entire worlds could be destroyed.

In one pivotal scene, the villain Scourge arrives to seize the key. The Maximal leader, Optimus Primal, faces a moment that will define everything—choosing to stay behind and hold off the enemy, fully aware it will almost certainly cost him his life. His sacrifice is not just about protecting the key, it’s about giving his team enough time to remain unified and committed to carrying it safely to another realm, which happens to be Earth. That shared focus and resolve becomes the turning point, where all three Rewired principles come alive.

It also reminded me how the same dynamics can surface far from a fictional battlefield—in real projects, with real stakes, where the outcome matters just as much to the people involved. One that stands out for me is the 25th anniversary campaign for the Internet Archive, where I served as the campaign communications specialist.

The Internet Archive, the largest digital archive, is a nonprofit founded in 1996 with the mission of providing universal access to all knowledge. One of its best-known tools is the Wayback Machine, a resource so impactful it has been profiled by outlets like CBS News in stories such as “How the Wayback Machine is preserving outdated government websites.” The Wayback Machine captures and preserves websites so people can revisit earlier versions of the web. For the anniversary, the team launched the Wayforward Machine, a forward-looking tool showing a dystopian version of the internet in 2046 if the Archive no longer existed. Campaign participants could type in their favorite websites and see a vision of what might be lost.

This was not just a technical project. It was global in scope, involving stakeholders from different cultures and backgrounds—who all had ties to the Wayback Machine. There was also a creative risk.

The campaign would deliberately showcase the opposite of what the organization stands for. To make it work, everyone involved needed to fully share the vision. They needed alignment that went beyond agreement and into synchronized action. And they needed commitment to push the project forward despite potential challenges or uncertainties.

A mentor and friend of mine, Wendy Hanamura, led the campaign as Internet Archive’s Head of Partnerships. She modeled how to build that kind of cross-cultural engagement and buy-in. The result was a campaign that earned formal recognition from the United States House of Representatives for its global impact and creativity, reinforcing for me how deeply vision, alignment, and commitment can shape lasting outcomes—and leaving a permanent mark on how I think about leadership.

As different as these two worlds are—one unfolding in a high-stakes battle between alien robots, the other in a global campaign to protect digital history—the pattern is the same. And it’s not just about the work itself. It’s about how stories, whether fictional or real, can hold the same truths if you know what to look for.

Think about the last time you got lost in a great movie, the kind where you’re halfway through a bucket of popcorn before you even realize it’s been showing you a bigger truth all along. The same is true for some of our favorite streaming series—they can quietly carry lessons about vision, alignment, and commitment without ever feeling like a corporate lecture.

These are the conditions that make digital and AI strategies more than technical rollouts. They are what turns ambition into real, sustained change. Whether you see it in a boardroom, a global campaign, or an unexpected movie scene, the lesson holds the same. Transformation is not just about building something new. It is about building it together, with the same clarity, unity, and resolve that will carry it through the hardest moments—onward.

If you’re working on a project where vision, alignment, and commitment could make the difference, I share more strategies and real-world examples on my website. You can explore them here: https://aiprojectswithnick.com