The Caine Mutiny

I am going to start writing about movies that I watched in the past, as I came across my old webpage which had a page on my thoughts on these movies. First to start is this old film, called "The Caine Mutiny", based on a book by the same name. I came across it during a lesson on leadership, and the lessons inside have followed me over the years, giving me guidance when times are tough.

You can read all about it in the Wikipedia entry on this film. The film itself is a shortened version of the book, with only the main plot concerning the events happening around LCDR Queeg and the "mutiny" by some of his officers against him onboard the USS Caine (a fictitious ship). The book, however, is based upon some of the events actually experienced by the author during his time serving in the US Navy.

The main leadership lesson that I learnt from watching this film is this: The boss will fail if the people under him stop supporting him. There are times (and it really depends on the job) when we can choose our bosses (we could, for example, quit and find a new job) but there are times when we do not have that luxury. When that is the case and we are faced with a difficult boss, it is easy to stop supporting him in our best capacity and just do what he tells us to do (we become, effectively, an extension of him, rather than ourselves). The more difficult thing to do is to continue being ourselves, to continue to try to contribute and help the boss do things the way we feel they should be done. It is difficult (the boss may not buy your ideas) but the moment we give up trying, we are setting up the boss to fail. Because one man can never be right in everything, he can never know everything.

Get the film and the book from Amazon.com: