Hacker Cinema
Twelve O'Clock High
1949 · Film · 132 min
Directed by Henry King
In the early days of daylight bombing raids over Germany, General Frank Savage must take command of a 'hard luck' bomber group. Much of the story deals with his struggle to whip his group into a disciplined fighting unit in spite of heavy losses, and withering attacks by German fighters over their targets.
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4 comments on Hacker News
Battle of Britain isn't the best from a narrative perspective, but damn is it a fun watch anyway.
My other favorite air war movies I've made it to so far are Twelve O'Clock High with its beautiful flying fortresses (they belly landed one of them! For the movie! For real!), extremely well-integrated war footage, and clear action (compare to the muddled, ugly mess that is The Dambusters); and Wings—how, how on Earth did they get such good aerial photography that early? And the miniature work isn't bad, either.
I've somehow heard of neither of your first two mentions, but will be checking them both out soon.
Twelve O'Clock High is a masterclass on running a software project. The higher-ups can see that something is wrong with the team; it's not performing as well as it ought to. The outsider comes in, figures out what the problems are, and fixes them. Not an easy fix, not a quick one, and it takes an awful toll on several people. But the team ends up working well again.
I show this movie to everyone I can. It's full of lessons.
Ouch.
This kind of thing generally works where there is underlying sense of duty, or impetus to win.
The WW2 film 'Twelve O'Clock High' where an Air Force General comes in an sorts out a demoralized and broken unit is used as training in various militaries to depict this kind of leadership on a higher level.
But 'reprimands' etc. tend only to work when there's a higher calling. Like winning a war.
For salaried teams - even if the team is being a little dysfunctional ... just might lead to mutiny, exodus.
From what you described I'm very surprised that the team didn't fall apart, or that the product was shipped.
A few things:
1) If the team was that utterly toxic, and people were openly backstabbing others ... this is not going to be fixed really. Those people are toxic they need to go.
2) Changing culture 'in place' is really hard with regular people. You can't just come in and play hardball with carrots and sticks. An alternative would be basically re-org the whole thing. Even having a different physical presence, maybe different team structure ... even if it's kind of a facade - a new work dynamic might set up people towards thinking of a 'clean start'. So instead of 'penalizing' people for coming in late etc. you have a new team dynamic in a new operating environment where 'everyone agrees' to more specific hours for the betterment of the team. A good idea would be to 'listen' to some of the problems, even if there's no action on it, just the act of listening will help.
I think you're lucky ... your 'no nonsense' manager is very lucky and this approach I think can only really work when there is a specific kind of dysfunction. I think if you have younger developers, all of whom lack self discipline but are otherwise good team members, maybe who need just a little bit of a kick in the pants. But I'm glad you had a good experience.
Regarding EV>Team>Self -- My favorite memory at HubSpot is Brian Halligan taking the time to sit us all down and watch Twelve O'Clock High. A movie about a World War II bomber unit that faltered after the general in charge valued team > mission > self. He paused every 10 minutes to ask us questions about the choices the general was making. It was one of the most unusual approaches to teaching management, but it stuck with me.