6 Lessons From The Sopranos

David Chase loved gangster movies. 

He fantasied about writing a screenplay, telling a different story of how the mob worked than what was already produced. 

Even while writing for the hit television show The Rockford Files, Chase was consumed with ideas about his mob movie and the surrounding characters. 

One day, he had a breakthrough. 

As he strolled into the writing room at the home of Rockford’s executive producer, Juanita Bartlett, Chase noticed a bunch of ducks walking up and down a ramp into the pool. 

He asked Bartlett about the strange set-up in her pool and she said, the ducks just showed up, so she built the ramp. 

Chase thought that’d be perfect for his main character, Tony, and he wrote a pilot episode. On Jan. 10, 1999, The Sopranos first aired on HBO.

As the show celebrates its 25th anniversary, there are many leadership lessons to take from Chase’s writing.

Jimmy Alteri, a lower-level character, explains how the mob’s organization works in an early episode. “The old guys set this up as a paramilitary organization. We need a supreme commander at the top, not the Dave Clark Five,” he said. 

And the supreme commander was Tony Soprano. 

1. Respect Everyone. Tony’s leadership was built on respect of those who worked for him and those who came before. Everything that made the family successful started with respect. From respecting the rules of the family to the chain of command. He believed “those who wanted respect give respect.” 

2. Measure Twice, Cut Once. Tony Soprano made decisions quickly and stuck to them. He once said: “All due respect, you got no idea what it’s like to be No. 1.” Every decision you make, affects every facet of every other thing. It’s too much to deal with almost. And in the end, you’re completely alone with it all. Being the leader can be lonely, especially if you do what’s right, not what is popular. 

3. Train, never Retrain. When one of his captains died unexpectedly, Tony had a successor in place. And that successor did even better than he ever anticipated. One of the failures of management today is the inability to mentor and develop a management team. Training is always better than retraining. The Mob never retrains. 

4. Top Down Accountability. Tony offered real accountability, unlike most leaders, really putting his life on the line. The lesson leaders can take from Tony Soprano is that you are, at the end of the day, 100 percent responsible for the actions of your people.

5. Learning from past mistakes. In Season 5, Tony has to welcome back an old-school member of the family Feech La Manna. Once back into the swing of things after a long prison sentence, La Manna behaves outside the organizational structure wanting to operate by his old rules. In season two, Tony had a similar problem with Richie Aprile which forces him to ask: Didn’t I learn anything from Richie Aprile? Tony solves the problem using a creative way to remove La Manna without causing dissension among his team. 

6. Know your competition. Even though Tony wasn’t much of a reader, he took the advice of his therapist and started reading the “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, using the strategy that was invoked 2400 years ago and as Tony says, “most of it still applies today.” 

From the moment Chase saw those ducks, he knew he had a beginning to his story. And we’re all thankful for the story he shared. 

On Culture: Culture requires accountability ― have we defined it and discipline ― are we consistent? Why is culture so often undefined or poorly defined? Because it requires self-awareness. We don't always want to hold ourselves accountable for something different than who we are. 

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