What Christopher Nolan’s film “Tenet” Teaches Us About Leadership and Time

When I first watched Tenet (2020, dir. Christopher Nolan), I walked out of the cinema both intrigued and exhausted. The film bends time in ways that make you question cause and effect, nothing feels linear, yet everything connects in the end.

That reminded me of leading complex projects. Deadlines, shifting priorities, and dependencies often push us to think not just forward, but backward. Sometimes the only way to move ahead is to start from the end and retrace our steps.

Here are a few lessons I took from Tenet that apply surprisingly well to project management and leadership.

Backward planning makes the impossible possible

In the movie, actions often unfold in reverse. It’s disorienting at first, but it’s also a reminder of a powerful leadership tool: planning backwards.

When managing projects across different time zones and stakeholders, I’ve often found that the only way to create clarity is to begin with the finish line and work in reverse. The “Go-Live date” becomes the anchor. Everything else adjusts around it.

Try it: take your current project and map it backwards. You’ll see which milestones are essential and which ones can be simplified or cut.

Complexity demands clarity

Tenet is famously complex. People still debate what really happened in the story. Yet each character has a clear mission.

That’s exactly what teams need from leaders. They can handle complexity, but they cannot function without clarity. Greg McKeown put it well in Essentialism: success comes from cutting through the noise and focusing on what truly matters.

Next time you set goals, don’t overwhelm your team with ten objectives. Give them two that really count. Watch how quickly alignment follows.

Trust is the bridge through uncertainty

What carries the Protagonist through his mission isn’t technology or even time inversion, it’s trust. His partnership with Neil shows that even in chaos, trust makes progress possible.

The same is true in business. When I worked with teams spread across four continents, processes and tools were helpful, but trust was what kept people moving. Small promises kept, quick responses, and transparent updates created momentum. And once trust compounds, everything else gets easier.

Time is the ultimate resource

Nolan’s characters manipulate time. We can’t. But the urgency feels familiar.

Every leader knows that time is the scarcest currency. The difference between a successful project and a failed one is often how well leaders prioritize. The Eisenhower Matrix, which separates the urgent from the important, has helped me more than once in moments of overload.

Sometimes leadership isn’t about adding more hours, it’s about choosing what not to do.

Leading projects can often feel as disorienting as watching Tenet. The paradox is that moving forward sometimes requires thinking in reverse, clarifying complexity, building trust, and making peace with the limits of time.

References

• Tenet (2020), directed by Christopher Nolan.

• Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (2014).

• Dwight Eisenhower, “The Eisenhower Matrix” framework on prioritization.