Mission Mangal gives a fascinating story on how leaders should behave, when the chips are down. It is based on a true story of Dr. Satish Dhawan and Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam.

In the opening scene in Mission Mangal, the leader takes responsibility for the unsuccessful mission, even though his team member is at fault. A year later when the launch is successful, he lets the team member take the credit.

This is modelled around a famous incident that took place when Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam was faced with the SLV-3 failure.

Prof. Satish Dhawan took upon himself the failure of the SLV-3 Mission at a public Press conference. A year later, after a successful launch he attributed the success of the subsequent Mission to his team.

Dr Kalam said “I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organisation owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team. The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience.”