The Expert Podcast

If you've never seen the movie 12 O'Clock High and you are a business owner, entrepreneur, or manage people, you may want to take a look at this film. It's actually a 70-plus-year-old movie, from 1949, starring Gregory Peck, who at the time was one of the leading actors in Hollywood. It's a World War II Army Air Force film that talks about bomber operations in the European theater, but more than just an entertaining war movie, it also has a very strong management lesson for business and even personal life management of others.

The story begins with a bomber squadron called the 918th, which is based in England. The leader of that group is having problems, as they are not successful on missions. A lot of planes are getting shut down, and people are getting killed. The general, who's in charge of that division, sends one of his assistants in to find out what's going on. It turns out that the manager, the leader of that group, had become too friendly with the pilots and the people within the organization, and because of that, the leader was making decisions that were not in the best interest of the group. He was trying to protect individual people, and because of that, people were getting killed. They were losing four or five planes every mission, whereas other groups in the same division weren't losing any or maybe just one or two.

So, the general sends in a new commander for that division, Frank Savage, played by Gregory Peck. He goes in, and he's a hard ass—by the book, yelling and screaming, just being really harsh as a management style. At first, all of the employees, per se, the pilots, want to quit. They want to transfer out, go to other divisions, or leave because they liked their old boss, who was really nice to them, coddled them, and didn't make them face harsh realities. But not facing those harsh realities made the operation's success fail. So, Frank Savage comes in, and he's a real hard ass. He's requiring very strict adherence to rules and discipline in the group.

The immediate result is that people want to quit, and they don't like it because they were used to the easy life. But what happens is that, even though everybody wants to quit, the success builds. Their mission planning improves, they are not losing as many aircraft, and they are successful on their bombing runs. But even during that, he has to get hard on people. This poor private sergeant keeps getting demoted and then promoted again. He goes from private to sergeant, back to private, and then to sergeant again because he keeps messing up.

Even throughout the success, many of the people in the group are still a little bit skeptical, and they still want to leave. He is actually doing something a little bit shady to keep people from transferring out of the division. He has his assistant, Stovall, slow down the paperwork, which is illegal. You're not supposed to slow down transfer paperwork in the Army. When the investigative attorney general comes in to investigate this paperwork fraud, he expects to get into trouble for holding back the paperwork. But what happens is, by then, they've accomplished a lot of things on missions and had some success, and everybody sticks up for him. The attorney general has no case and has to leave. So, now, he's the hero, and he's running it.

But what happens is, as he becomes a hero, he falls into the same trap as his predecessor. Now, he's too attached to the men, and he's taking too much of a burden on himself. There's a great scene at the end where he's so entranced with this group that he basically has a nervous breakdown.

The takeaway from this film is that there are two management styles: You can be your best friend to your employees, or you can just be a hard-ass boss to your employees. There's a place for both. Neither one management style by itself is going to work in the long run. We've seen a lot of tech companies with espresso bars, free avocado toast, and meditation pods that, in the long run, don't work. You may have a lot of employees who like working there, but the company's not successful. On the other hand, you have other companies where the boss is a tyrant, yelling and screaming. They might have some success, but you can't keep people. You need both management styles.

This film, if you are at all in management, or even family leadership, shows you both sides of those management styles and the risks of each one. You don't want to become this guy, where you're so grimly attached to the results that you burn yourself out. On the other hand, you don't want to be too much of a friend to your direct reports because then you're not going to get anything accomplished. In order to have durable, ongoing success, you need both.

If you are a student of management, and even in personal life, like with families, and you watch this film, you will see each one of these management styles playing out. You can see where each one succeeds and where each one fails. Besides the fact that it's a very entertaining film, it's different from the type of movies produced today. It doesn't have special effects, and the dialogue is different, but if you can appreciate the pure art of Hollywood filmmaking, this is actually a good film to watch. You can imagine all the work that went into it without having special effects or other types of technology.

Even if you watch the movie just for a great story, it's a good film to watch. I've watched it many times, probably 20 to 30 times over the years, and each time I pick up one more little nuance from the different characters and different lines. One of my favorite sections is when the general overseeing all of this is pushing Frank Savage to do it. He says, "Well, are you sure you want to do this? It may not succeed. These pilots might buckle under the pressure." And the general says, "Look, if that's going to happen, I want to find that out now. I don't want to find that out in the middle of the war where we lose to Germany and our whole country goes away." He makes a point: If there's going to be weaknesses in our system, let's find it out now so we can fix it. That's something a lot of managers face. Sometimes you're afraid to make decisions or take action because you might lose a valuable person or you might prove that your system isn't working. It's better to find that out early, pivot, and make adjustments.

So, there are a lot of great management lessons that can come from this. At least, that's what I've found. If you're a business operator, manager, or even in charge of a family, watch this film. If you've seen it already, let me know what you think in the comments. If you watch it and find other valuable experiences that you can use in everyday life, put it in the comments and let us know how it affected you.