A change of guard

By Patrick Murphy

Perhaps you have dreamed of mutiny. Perhaps you serve under a boss whose grasp of what is important to the organisation’s success and how to achieve it is so shaky that he or she should be dispatched as an incompetent. Or maybe that leader’s treatment of subordinates is so uncaring as to be abusive. When do mutinies actually succeed?

In the Age of Discovery, seafarers like Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan and Henry Hudson undertook risky ventures at sea. Interestingly, we find that mutinies go differently for different kinds of bad leaders. When leaders are technically weak, for example, but well-liked, members depose them via fast, tactical mutinies.

The case of Henry Hudson, set adrift on today’s Hudson Bay, is a prime example. Members depose technically brilliant but not well-liked leaders with careful, strategic mutinies. Here, a mutiny against Ferdinand Magellan on the South American coast comes to mind (although, apparently, it wasn’t strategic enough; Magellan viciously quashed it).

When leader actions threaten the values that members share, an organisation becomes a social powder keg… In a modern organisation, an assault on a work group’s shared values more likely threatens higher-order needs for meaning and esteem. Because a mutiny requires coordinated, energised action, the role of the ringleader is essential. Inspiring ringleaders are as vital to mutinies as founders are to entrepreneurial ventures.

From “Is it Time for Mutiny?”