You might be surprised to learn that you can learn valuable leadership lessons by watching the Apollo 13 movie that appears on various cable channels these days. Wishing for success didn’t make this spaceship return to Earth. True leaders have strategies they employ to ensure that failure, as they say in the movie, is not an option.

The first step is, of course, to communicate that you have a problem in the first place and “Houston, we have a problem” did just that. Let’s continue our journey to find out what else the Apollo 13 movie can teach us about leadership:

o Don’t wait to call your support team. Create a backup support team on your project. At the first sign of trouble, ask for help. Call them; get them out of bed like in the movie. Think of your support team as stand-ins for the project. They know what you know.

o Work the problem. Defining the problem is the hardest part of solving it. They didn’t solve part of the problem with the spaceship and then congratulated themselves; this is common and generally generates additional work. Don’t make the problem worse by guessing what’s wrong.

o Know when to cut your losses. Hear from the experts on your team. It didn’t take long to decide that they weren’t going to the moon. They did not insist on that. They went on; and you should too.

o Stay calm. In the movie, multiple people write down coordinates, review them, and report the results to the leadership. They remain calm despite the life or death situation. If they were able to do this in Apollo 13, you can do it in your office.

o Keep the lines of communication open. In the film, a character turns off his television and picks up his phone, costing him valuable time and contribution to resolving the crisis. Make sure you can get in touch with the people on your team. Create a policy if necessary.

o Work with what you have — not what you want. Many leadership teams waste valuable time and effort discussing what could have been. Remorse, like other regrets, accomplishes nothing. In the movie, a team drops real items they have to work with on the spaceship to correct oxygen levels on a table. Enough talk.

o Be creative. In the movie, a character despairs about how the items on the table can solve the oxygen problem; they weren’t designed for this, he declares. The leader responds, “I don’t care what it was designed for. I care what it can do.”

o Never stop practicing. Simulate success at every opportunity. Test it. In the film, the astronaut on the ground works in the test chamber until the process is successful. Test your theories.

o Stick to tried and true procedures. Don’t throw everything out the window. You probably had a good reason for coming up with your procedures. They worked for a reason and will do it again.

o Reaffirm your vision. Leaders must remind people why work needs to be done in positive and sometimes dramatic terms.

When Apollo 13 occurred, the United States was facing its first major space disaster. It did not happen. The team leader told them he would not, inspiring success.