

Is it Time for Mutiny? - lando2319
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/is_it_time_to_stage_a_mutiny.html

======
VexXtreme
In my company there was recently a successful case of mutiny where an
incompetent project manager was removed from a project and subsequently made
to leave the company.

Long story short, the guy was making stupid technical decisions (some of which
were incredibly harmful to the project), he was unable to complete his tasks
within a reasonable timespan, he was dictatorial and argumentative with other
developers despite lacking technical expertise and a plethora of other issues.
A few developers got together, went to his boss, told him about the situation
(basically what I wrote above, though in a more tactful way), managed to
convince the boss that the guy is a major liability and a risk to the project
and succeeded in removing him from the project. The project is now successful
once again.

It was an incredibly risky move in my opinion but it succeeded because the
devs were organized, disciplined and tactful and presented their case to the
higher ups in a rational and reasonable manner. If you're dealing with a
situation like this, it helps to stay calm and try to not come off as a
moaner/potential power grabber or something worse. It's risky but it can be
done.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
Fantastic example and it sounds like it went well.

What about if "guy" == "son and "boss" == "father"? Any tips? :)

~~~
fghh45sdfhr3
Find another job. Not just with "son and father" but also with genetically
unrelated cronies.

------
lkrubner
>It's a rarely studied era

More accurate: 100 years ago it was an intensely studied era, as the West
struggled to understand what had allowed it to conquer the whole world. But it
is an era that has gone out of fashion. It is not now widely studied.

But even now, the subject is not unknown. The person who did the best
comparison of modern entrepreneurs and the old sea faring culture was Ted
Goranson, in a small pamphlet called "Whale of a Tale." It is tragic that this
pamphlet is now out of print. It used to be that you could find a copy on
Amazon, but now it seems to be gone. It was only 25 pages, and did a brilliant
job showing how the old laws and cultures of the seafaring nations became the
basis for the modern understanding of entrepreneurs.

I understand that his "whale" story was incorporated into the book he
eventually wrote:

[http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Virtual-Enterprise-Cases-
Metrics...](http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Virtual-Enterprise-Cases-
Metrics/dp/1567202640/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365609764&sr=1-1)

I have not read the book so I can not vouch for it.

In his pamphlet, Goranson did a great job of arguing that whaling ships were
the worlds first Virtual Agile Enterprises. Very insightful reading.

~~~
profpjm
that's a pretty good pamphlet, thanks for sharing. but unfortunately, age of
discovery seafaring ventures and whaling ventures were very different indeed.
the former where driven by discovery and intensely entrepreneurial. the latter
were driven my mercantilism and commercial routines and more industrial i.e.,
less entrepreneurial. you'll learn far more about the implicitly human
dynamics of coordinated upward defiance (mutiny) and entrepreneurial action
studying the age of discovery. that's what mutiny and its bounty does. whaling
wasn't part of the age of discovery, as you imply (btw it belies your point
that the age of discovery was intensely studied). whaling came later, with
england, which was about 100 years behind spain and 200 years behind portugal
with regard to seafaring. that being said, english mercantilism and its
traditions generated the largest empire in world history. but large
bureaucratic empires are not really what we're talking about here; we're
talking about agile entrepreneurial ventures.

------
hollerith
A ship (or fleet of ships) on a voyage of discovery goes thousands of miles
away from any court or police presence or indeed from any prospective allies
or enemies who even speak the same language as the people on the ship.

That single strategic factor makes stories of mutinies dramatically
interesting, but it also leaves me puzzled (even after reading the article at
hbr.org) as to why the author of the article at hbr.org expects his book or
his article to shed much light on situations in which all parties have
recourse at any time to a judical system with a strong centuries-old
commitment to the preservation of the rights of property and its duly
appointed "agents" (i.e., the managers of the corporation).

ADDED. Well, yeah, for a group of employees with a bad boss to go over the
boss's head to try to get the boss removed has some resemblance to a mutiny on
a ship, but why rely on this rather tenuous connection between mutinies on
wooden ships and "modern employee mutinies"? Why not directly study cases when
in this day and age employees tried to get their boss removed? Because reading
about mutinies on wooden ships is more fun? Because it makes for drama that
can be converted into page views?

ADDED. Another huge difference is that for an employee to leave the ship
during the voyage means being stranded 1000s of miles from civilization, which
is a much bigger deal than walking away from unvested options or the chance of
a pension.

~~~
greenyoda
Exactly! Complaining to the boss's boss is a very different process than
slitting the captain's throat in the middle of the night and throwing him
overboard. I'm not sure how one sheds any light on the other.

------
ChikkaChiChi
Let's say a "friend" of mine works for a company of about 100 people. There
would be clear lines of demarcation between departments, management, and
responsibility but that is not what ownership wants. Instead they run a flat
system where the patriarch (of the family that owns the company):

* bypasses all "managers" to assign tasks direct to the employee

* never has a meeting asking for suggested fixes, just what he thinks he should do

* will not support any directives not thought up by him

This is not standard "every office" has this paranoia. My friend has a long
history of employment and they know the difference.

The problem is that they grew to care about the rest of the staff. My friend
fancies himself the protector and even for a time was |---| close to heading
up company operations. Nevertheless, it never happened.

My point is that the company is ripe for just such a mutiny. People are unable
to do their jobs effectively and it's caused such a turtling effect that
nobody wants to stick their neck out anymore.

But a mutiny wouldn't help, would it? Would it?

All my friend can see is more divisiveness separating the ownership from the
employees who are already treated as a line in the expense ledger. If the
owner could, he'd do everyone's job and he'd do it better than they could.

A mutiny would do nothing more than to reinforce that he thinks people have a
bad attitude, as opposed to realizing one exists because of the situation.

Everyone where my friend works want to see the company continue to succeed.
But what incentive is there for people to care when you are treated as if your
input is meaningless?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Interesting comment, you are thinking too much "inside the box" though. There
is the kind of mutiny (which is common in Silicon Valley) where a strategic
chunk of the "crew" (aka the employess) believe in the goal but not the
management and so they leave as a group to re-create the same enterprise they
are in, but with a better (for them) management structure.

This sort of strategic mutiny is made possible in California by its employee
friendly laws which make "non-compete" clauses unenforceable and ownership
claims over work the employee does outside the office difficult.

In the case of a small company, strategic mutinies like this can be fatal to
the original company because often times expertise is concentrated into a
single individual. When management is aware of that, it is sometimes possible
to 'mutiny in place' where a meeting with management is held where the choice
is provided to change or potentially lose the entire company. Such mutinies
have a somewhat more checkered outcome of the ones I've been aware of (two
succeeded and three "failed" in that the strategic group ended up walking out
anyway). In larger companies a group of 10 - 15 folks can walk out and cause
pain but not a mortal wound to the parent company.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
Couldn't agree more. Unfortunately for the situation stated, the startup
capital involved is more significant since they are an online retailer in a
very popular, but very expensive hobby.

In this case, I think a mutiny is far less likely because the valuation of
talent is far less than its true worth. In this case, the staff just needs to
win back their own confidence that they are good enough to find a place where
they may be appreciated more as opposed to teaching an old dog new tricks.

------
gpcz
As the last sentence in the article states, I believe the modern-day form of
mutiny is brain-drain. Ships were closed systems with limited means for
dissatisfied crew members to leave. The business world, on the other hand, is
an open system.

~~~
lkrubner
>The business world, on the other hand, is an open system.

Depending on the country. There is probably an interesting relationship
between the openness of the business system (how easy is it to quit and get a
different job) and how much people feel the need to fight to reform their
current job.

I know that in Eastern Europe there is still a culture that feels that past a
certain age it is difficult to find a new job, and so one must stick with
one's current job, and mutiny if the leadership is very bad. (To some extent,
that attitude is everywhere, but it is much stronger in some areas of the
world. The English speaking nations seem to lead the way in assuming that
quitting and hiring and firing should all be fairly free.)

------
richardjordan
The key difference with corporate "mutinies" and mutinies at sea is that on a
ship your mutiny needs to take control of the ship to succeed. Life without
the safety of the ship poses significant existential threat. It is often
better, and less risky for modern would-be mutineers to follow the example of
the traitorous eight and just leave as a group and do their own thing.

Also, a mutiny gathered steam inboard a ship because poor management of ship
and resources was life threatening. A lot of folks in a poorly managed company
still live a comfortable lifestyle and take home a large paycheck (cough
Yahoo! engineers pre-Mayer) so have little incentive to join a mutiny which
might jeopardize that.

~~~
profpjm
actually in both settings you have an example of shared values being
affronted. on a ship the values concern safety and food. in a firm the values
concern socialization and esteem. in both settings, leaders undertake actions
that violate shared values. so the mechanism that stimulates mutiny in both
settings is identical. moreover, it is indeed possible for mutineers to take
control (subtle control, over weeks or months) of a venture, department, or
firm.

~~~
ghshephard
"it is indeed possible for mutineers to take control..of a ... firm."

I think it's important to make a distinction between the typical infighting of
corporate politics, in which one organization (or leader) wins out over
another, resulting in a round of layoffs and re-orgs where one of the leaders
comes out on top, and a mutiny, in which those subordinate to an ultimate
leader of a firm (CEO) take control.

In the scenario of a mutiny on a ship, this is done by force. In the scenario
of the modern public corporation, the CEO is subordinate to the board of
directors, and I'm struggling to come up with an example in which the
subordinates of a CEO displaced that CEO. Certainly not by force, and almost
never by doing an end-run around the CEO to the Board of Directors, except in
the case of fraud/violations of corporate policy - which I don't really
consider a Mutiny, but more of a reporting of violations to the Board of
Directors, in which the Board makes a decision.

I agree with the parent - It really is very, very rare (still trying to think
of an example) in which anything more than a departmental mutiny takes place.
The CEO's job is usually quite secure (until the Board decides otherwise) - it
is much more often the case that those individuals simply leave and go form
their own venture (The traitorous eight)

------
dzink
Over a period of several years at a large corporation I tested different
approaches to "benign" change as I was watching dark clouds duke it out at the
SVP level above us. The way to move things was to propose an opportunity that
was infectious (aka the person pitching it could see benefit to passing it on)
and to spread it widely fast, so it works like a trend everyone is talking
about, rather than a one sided push. If everyone thought it was their idea,
things moved.

The organization seemed to work like an organism - every new idea was treated
like a foreign body. Rightly so, because when you have that many jobs at
stake, the wrong idea can get the whole business sick. The projects that went
through acted like a virus in that environment... until they reached the
political cloud.

At levels below VP, we operated as a relative meritocracy. At levels above
that, power was limited, so for someone to win others had to lose. If you
wanted to push an initiative above that level, you had to bet on the right
SVP. At that point you start seeing them play out the House of Cards mutiny
style in action: the "Piss sideways to avoid splashing and to lessen the
noise" kind. Needless to say, I left to do a startup.

------
michaelochurch
I've seen more corporate mutiny attempts in a few years than most people do in
their lives. If you want mutiny, you have to divide power against itself.
Power wants to unite. It wants the competition to be between it and the
outside because that's the unfair kind that it can always win. Creating
competition _within_ power forces them into fights they might actually lose.
They don't like that. So it's hard.

The problem with deposing bad leadership is that it usually _likes_ being bad,
because it's more fun for such people to be arbitrary, capricious and mean
than to actually hold themselves responsible for making good decisions. You're
going to have to find a "good guy" executive to lead the fight and, often,
there aren't any. They've all been driven out, and bad guys or apathetic
people remain (most corporate execs aren't "evil" in the sadistic sense, but
merely apathetic and corruptible.)

Effective corporate mutinies don't come from rabble-rousing. They come from
executive turmoil. You have to create a Red Team and a Blue Team and set them
against each other in an all-out war with no quarter and existential stakes.
Warning: you'll probably lose your job even if your side wins.

Usually, successful corporate mutinies lead to the winning executive
contingent becoming powerful, but their supporters (including those who
started the mutiny) being the thrown-aside "useful idiots". So that's another
problem with it.

I love _the idea of_ corporate mutiny, but I've also seen enough to realize
that it rarely works. It's better to just let brain-drain take care of it (and
be part of the drain, too).

~~~
ghshephard
I've seen a number of mutiny attempts - some were famously successful, some
worked out exactly as you would guess a "mutiny" would when their leader
discovered.

In one mutiny, during a pretty significant re-org/layoffs, part of our
organization had been sold to another (perceived to be inferior) company - the
majority of the organization (that hadn't been laid off) - was just happy to
still have a job, but a select group of technical employees decided (under the
direction of a strong ring leader) - that they would not go to the other
company. The ringleader was able to get five or six key technical employees to
mutiny with him, and that would have been sufficient to jeopardize ongoing
operations. His demands were met, and they were able to stay with initial
company. No retribution ever occurred, and they had several successful years
as employees.

Another attempt at clear-cut mutiny that I've seen, was a technical leader who
was not fond of his manager, reach out to a competing organization (In a clear
cut Red/Blue scenario) in the company, and volunteered to "take all his
employees over" to that organization. The manager, for whatever reason,
forwarded the email to the technical leader's manager, and that technical
leader was then terminated the next morning for "insubordination." - Over the
next two to three months every single member of that team resigned their jobs
in protest, causing disruption for the next several quarters at the company.
Mutiny both failed, and caused great disruption to the company.

The OP article is pretty good - it captures pretty much all of the elements
that make for mutiny, and the circumstances in which it can be successful, and
how it takes place.

~~~
speeder
I saw a preemptive counter-mutiny once that ended badly...

One person was leader of a newly formed team, and a kind of star programmer
(that actually delivered). That person started to bypass the most direct boss,
and talk directly to the CEO, frequently.

So we have a CEO that like the "victim", and a person between CEO and "victim"
that want to get rid of the "victim" because he is a potential threat.

Then "victim" has some health issues, and start to code much slower... the
"boss" attempts to fire him, but CEO rescue him.

Then "boss" awaits for CEO go some months later to a meeting, asks "victim" to
show his finished project (the deadline was still next week, but "boss"
claimed he could review now), declares it as failed, and fire him in a very
public way, forcing him to exit the building with all of his stuff immediately
and leave all his credentials and keys behind. Also "boss" stealthly sets up
some e-mail filter, so "victim" cannot mail the CEO.

Other employees realized what happened, and most of them quit (Even several
ones that had nothing to do with the "victim")

"boss" gambled, he was the favourite of CEO, and he knew that a public firing
could not be undone by the CEO, because the CEO would not do anything that
looked like a public punishment... Indeed, CEO did nothing, except watch his
ship almost sink (it did not sunk, they could hire another team after about a
year and a half...)

------
lesterbuck
Sometimes if mutiny isn't possible, the mutineer takes another tack. Henry
Singleton was an engineering and financial wizard at Litton, but he was not in
the running for CEO, so he left with a cadre of Litton's best people and
started Teledyne. Over the years, Teledyne grew much faster than Litton,
bought many companies, and took large positions in other companies' stock. At
its peak ownership, Teledyne had about 30% of the common shares of Litton,
leading to many sleepless nights for the Litton executives.

------
emmelaich
Related ... for good reasons, a scrum team explicitly has the option of
rejecting one of the members of the team.

(edit) presumably that includes the scrum master.

~~~
majc2
A real mutiny would be rejecting the product owner!

------
ctdonath
MIT offers "How to Stage a Revolution" <http://web.mit.edu/~21h.001/www/>

------
lando2319
Just started reading it yesterday. I'm looking forward to reading about high
stakes on the high seas.

------
krisneuharth
"It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy." - Steve Jobs

------
known
the top 1 percent own 40 percent of U.S. wealth, the bottom 80 percent own
just 7 percent of America's wealth
[https://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-is-worse-than-
you...](https://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-is-worse-than-you-
think-2013-3)

