HR Nightmare: Ninja Assassin

In the urge to get a fill of movie violence, I made my way to "Ninja Assassin" recently. Blood hit the ceiling and walls regularly and the body count was high. Any semblance of logical coherence was neither expected nor delivered. But surprisingly there is a story (all be it unintentional) hiding behind all the limb-dicing and blood letting. And this story finds resonance with the most far removed profession from martial arts i.e. - human resource.

Premise
Raizo the protagonist and the namesake of the title, is a member of one of the deadly and ancient clan of Ninjas. Ninjas are the traditional Japanese professional assassins-for-hire. The whole of the story of "Ninja Assassins" is encompassed by the two words in the title - Raizo turns on the clan and starts assassinating Ninjas. Very straight-forward and no nonsense.

The HR interpretation
First, Raizo was kidnapped and brainwashed as a young child by the Ninja clan. As a strategy the kidnap and indoctrination method of external recruitment is extremely effective, the armed forces come very close to this in their cadet system although they don't exactly kidnap children. The possibility of dissent is almost eliminated and hence there is no challenge to the organization and methods until Raizo's rejection of his surrogate community in the film shows up the importance of self-identity for an employee. Also the lack of internal recruitment (like say - heredity) means that the ninjas deal with an unknown commodity each time they recruit.

Second, the training through discipline and punishment keep the trainee ninjas on a tight leash. We see that Raizo's love interest, Kiriko is not convinced by the direction of the training and rebels leading to her execution. After that Raizo develops a grudge against the system which inevitably leads to his departure from their fold. The lesson here is to not alienate trainees through unreasonable practices.

Next, the incentives and perks should be designed to provide motivation to the employees. The ninjas demand of 100 pounds of gold per hit should normally be a great inducement for them. But the movie shows the ninjas leading an almost ascetic life in the mountains where wealth seems to be of little consequence to their personalities. Although Raizo is informed time and again that he would take over from his master, the prospect of promotion is not a resource retaining incentive for Raizo and the clan fails to recognize this.

Finally, the non existence of an exit strategy is the main personnel issue within their system. The conflict between Raizo and the ninjas can be put down to the lack of a proper means of amicable severance where everybody lives. The bad blood between Raizo and the ninjas leads to Raizo ganging up with the enemies of the ninjas i.e. law enforcement, resulting in the climatic battle thus dooming the clan. Interpretation - Poaching is a major issue in ninja land too.

Extra Reading:

1. India's Ninja Version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggie
2. India's pride? Behram, World's Top Assassin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_prolific_murderers_by_number_of_victims