I will be presenting Golden Lion Cannes Award-winning Director Corydon Wagner February 27, 6-8pm. As a successful entrepreneur who leads projects with billions of dollars at play, he will present what business leaders can learn from directing and producing film. Sign up here. Below is the announcement text with a link to Wagner’s page.

Business today forces leaders to form and lead teams under difficult conditions, even where few team members have worked together before, yet all have to create world-class quality on which billion-dollar campaigns hinge.

The film industry has worked in those conditions since its start and business leaders can learn from it. Corydon Wagner, Cannes Golden Lion award-winning Director and co-founder of his production company, will describe the big picture and details of such challenges and how he overcomes them. His success comes in part for understanding the business side of film that many other directors don’t. He articulates it well, with real life examples on set, hiring people, during interviews, and so on.

As with business leaders, the Director leads teams of hundreds of people. Necessity forces the Director to delegate critical tasks, forcing him/her to work with experts who bring their own teams that the Director has to vet and then trust completely. At the center is the Director’s vision. The stakes in film are billions of dollars. Timelines are short — sometimes days. The accountability is that millions of people will see and judge the output. Careers can end over simple mistakes. The teams are diverse and haven’t worked together before, nor will they possibly work together again. Success hinges on personal relationships, experience, delegation, empathy, vision and reputation. It is a higher stakes, fast-paced, high-tech, high accountability, nomadic business.