
Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO (2011) - tosh
https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo-2/
======
wespiser_2018
Can we stop comparing business to war? In war, you destroy the enemy, and pay
in blood and gold. It's a matter of life and death, and the strategic
objectives are black and white.

Business is not really like this. First, if everyone doesn't go home, you're
going to have a major problem with OSHA. Next, there is rarely a singularity
of purpose around a strategy and viable, co-operative alternatives are
possible. Next, crushing all your competition would lead to an un-beneficial
monopoly, so it's not really a worthwhile fight. Finally, war, and
specifically combat are high stress and traumatic experiences that are not
sustainable for more than a few months at a time. Humans can act in this way,
and maybe the CEO is in this pure fight/ flight/freeze/posture mode, but it's
not great to lead a major company there.

That said, there is a lot we can learn from the military, but this "business
as war" analogy is pretty absurd. Does it mean the workers are mercenaries? If
a worker leaves the company, are they a traitor? Maybe I'm reading too far
into it, but let's leave war to the military!

~~~
jasode
_> Can we stop comparing business to war? In war, [...]_

No, we can't because talking about _any topic_ with war metaphors seems to be
deeply ingrained in human _linguistics_.

In games like football, we talk about the the quarterback being the "field
general" and the offensive tackles and defensive tackles "battling in the
trenches".

When husbands & wives argue or fight in divorce cases, we talk about them
"drawing their battle lines".

Historians or politicians often talk of "class warfare" or "war on poverty".
The "Occupy Wall Street" protest is another borrowing of words from war.

Biologists and doctors talk about "war against disease" and the "war on
cancer".

Wikipedia's most controversial articles have "edit wars" which results in
pages getting locked.

In computer science, we have the _" Byzantine Generals Problem"_ which is war
metaphor.

If you want to jump into every thread <topic X> to plead with people to "stop
comparing X to war", you're not going to get anywhere. (E.g. "can we please
stop comparing distributed computing fault detection to Byzantium generals and
war?")

Even the linguistics field which studied our propensity to always compare
topics to "war" also went meta on itself with "linguistic wars":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics_wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics_wars)

~~~
jbattle
> ingrained in human linguistics

Or maybe more accurately it's deeply ingrained in Anglo-American culture?

~~~
jasode
_> Or maybe more accurately it's deeply ingrained in Anglo-American culture?_

I don't know about all languages but French, German, and Chinese all have
military and war metaphors that are commonly used in everyday speech. It's not
unique to American English.

------
enitihas
I think Schmidt was the real wartime CEO here, when the war could have
extinguished Google. e,g. Microsoft changing the default search engine on IE
when it had > 80% share could have hurt google a lot more than Facebook or
social ever could. Chrome was probably Google's "Manhattan Project" in that
regard.

By contrast, when Larry came to power, Google was more like the USA today.
Rich, with very good resources, and playing the role of world superpower.

~~~
zelon88
But at the time search wasn't really Microsoft's wheelhouse. That became
immediately apparent to everyone who then immediately made the deliberate
switch to Google. Essentially giftwrapping public trust in Microsoft and
handing it to Google. Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot was the best
thing for Google at that time.

Microsoft was prioritizing an unscalable revenue stream: advertising. Google
was expanding the search market, and later came back for the advertising and
browser markets once it had resources. Up until about the Google plus days
Google never engaged in an endeavor with serious competition.

------
whatshisface
This was published in 2011, and refers to Larry Page and Google+. It turns out
that Google would have been better off if they had been less single-minded
about pushing their new product. So take it all with a grain of salt.

~~~
tmpz22
Beyond that, has anyone else noticed how executive types LOVE to quote movies
like the god father, wolf of wall street, and similar types of media, as if
they themselves are the protagonist and/or "hero" of the story? Its a "Rah-
rah" strongman ideal chalk full of projection and other bullshit mechanisms.

To quote M.A.S.H. " War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the
two, war is a lot worse." What is business? Cupcakes.

~~~
the_af
Yes. And what's worse, they misinterpret movies like the Wolf of Wall Street
as something to admire (even if being aware of the excesses), when they are
really descriptions of broken, corrupt, hateful individuals and criminals.
Quoting the Wolf of Wall Street shouldn't serve as an endorsement of
_anything_.

------
Ididntdothis
I think a lot of CEOs don’t recognize when the war is over. What worked for a
while may not work forever.

Stack ranking is a classical example. Firing the bottom 10% once or twice may
actually be a good thing. But then you have to realize that this was a one off
and you should stop or things get weird. Same with crunch time projects. My
company recently has had a few high urgency projects with a lot of overtime
and stress. Instead of calming down things it seems management has got
addicted to permanent panic and not surprisingly people are burning out.

~~~
enitihas
This applies not just to CEOs, but political leaders too.

Even Churchil, considered a hero in Britain after WWII, lost the next election
badly to Atlee, as people were looking for a peacetime leader.

The good thing is Atlee setup the NHS. So I guess peacetime leaders are
important after war.

~~~
ptrott2017
Its easy to forget that Attlee was Churchill's deputy during the ww2 and that
the various labour leaders who led govt departments (Morrison, Gaitskell etc)
or in opposition (e.g. Bevan) in ww2 established their legitimacy to govern
post-war. Similarly When Churchil was re-elected back to power in 1951 he
recognised that Attlee's government key achievements like the National Health
service (whch Churchill had originally fiercly opposed) were for the benefit
of the country and did not dismantle them. Attlee and Churchill in some
respects had combination of both war and peace time leaders that isnt always
recognised.

(Edit: clarity and spelling)

~~~
pzs
I am glad you mentioned Churchill here. I recently read a few biographies
about him, and he appears to have had just the leadership capabilities needed
to win the war, but those same leadership capabilities didn't make him as
successful a leader during peacetime.

~~~
Ididntdothis
I often think that war leadership is much easier than peacetime. You have a
clearly defined goal and not too many competing priorities. Peace is much more
complex.

------
irjustin
As a serial startup engineer, I've only been in wartime situations since
leaving my last big-co job 12 years ago.

I agree with the large paintbrush aim of the article. Singular focus and
knowing how to load your gun and fire those 1-3 shots you've got. You don't
get 6, or 18 - that's peacetime. You have lots of data, customer feedback etc
to show you how to point those few those shots, but that's all you've really
got.

The one sentiment I didn't fully agree with was:

> Peacetime CEO spends time defining the culture. Wartime CEO lets the war
> define the culture.

This makes it feel like during war time the CEO doesn't have control of the
culture, which counter to the entire post, is exactly what the CEO has control
of. It's just that the culture is different in peace vs war, just like the
CEOs are. Arguably the whole company is different all the way to an individual
person level.

To speak to the other threads, I don't think the co-founders of Google were
ever good peace or wartime CEOs. I think they rightfully gave up that seat
multiple times because it's just not them. And to be explicit, there's nothing
wrong with that.

~~~
entee
Both the culture point and:

"Peacetime CEO strives for broad based buy in. Wartime CEO neither indulges
consensus-building nor tolerates disagreements."

Feel off to me. You're always creating culture, and if you've got good people
and a strong culture, consensus flows naturally from single-minded mission
focus. No matter how dire the straights, you need buy in from your team. In a
crisis, that buy in stems from the mission and trust you've built over the
years. Dictatorial decrees without a team that trusts you and a strong culture
will cause the company to fail regardless of how urgent the battle. They'll
just quit.

------
thinkingkong
"Peacetime CEO does not raise her voice. Wartime CEO rarely speaks in a normal
tone."

"Peacetime CEO strives for broad based buy in. Wartime CEO neither indulges
consensus-building nor tolerates disagreements."

Oh good just what we need. More permission to be a jerk at work to try and
communicate urgency. This is one of those things where a smart accomplished
person says a thing and we're supposed to listen but even in 9 years this
behavior is outmoded. If we framed all of this up as ruthless prioritization
and clear understanding of urgency, then that tells you what you need to know.
Figure out what works for you in a way that doesn't violate your teams'
principles and values.

~~~
setr
>Figure out what works for you in a way that doesn't violate your teams'
principles and values.

What works for me is to be a jerk

and if it violates my teams' principles and values, I replace those
individuals until it doesn't

;)

~~~
brookside
Looks like we've got a badass on our hands!

Seriously though, looking at your linkedin profile, you have been out of
school for less than 2 years. There's a lot more to learn about other people.

~~~
setr
The winking smiley was meant to give it away as a joke.. because the parent's
final statement doesn't actually mean anything (because it still justifies any
behavior... including the one being attacked)

------
the_gipsy
"Anybody can do peacetime CEO, you just sit and do nothing. I, on the other
hand, am a Warrior CEO of great success!"

------
m_a_g
>Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written
by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.

Such a good point. Most of the famous management books fall into this
category.

~~~
lowdose
A good CEO seems to be able to separate the theories that bring value. Jeff
Bezos and Steve Jobs with Jim Collins for example. Maybe management science is
still in its early days.

------
vearwhershuh
I'm indifferent towards the content of this article, but a meta-point: it is
interesting how our civilian society has militarized so thoroughly. There are
the obvious things like the militarization of the police forces, but it has
trickled down to seemingly frivolous things like "Cupcake Wars" and "Cutthroat
Kitchen".

I wonder if this is organic or not.

~~~
magicsmoke
It might be because members of developed societies are so unlikely to come
into contact with actual war that they can call even the most minor conflicts
a war. Lack of stimulus accentuates what little you can get.

~~~
Jaygles
Or just more broadly people trying to market their things as being a higher
level than their competitors. This escalates the language used and we end up
with things like cupcake wars and every other article claiming someone
"slammed" or "destroyed" another by just making a comment.

------
austinjp
Odd. I've always interpreted these tropes as caricatures of people who act _as
if_ they're at war or at peace, not as binary exemplars. The world's a lot
more complex than war/peace, surely?

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450669](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450669)

~~~
raldi
What a treasure the long life of the HN archives has become.

------
late2part
This is much more entertaining if you replace wartime CEO with Goofus, and
peacetime CEO with Gallant.

------
yowlingcat
Even if you take the analogy literally, the distinction between peacetime and
wartime has itself blurred as a result of nonlinear warfare and "forever"
wars. I think it's clear that Ben Horowitz has not been an operator in far too
long and anyone who takes this advice seriously deserves the failure that's
coming to them. If we're going to match thinkpiece VCs against other
thinkpiece VCs, Peter Thiel is probably much more sanguine and closer to
reality than he is.

Thiel argues that the opposite of the competition emerges (which is a
monopoly), and that these monopolies tend to operate much more ruthlessly and
efficiently in the present day and are much harder, if not impossible, to
dismantle. I disagree with him on whether that's a good thing or not, but I
think his understanding of corporate mechanisms is much closer to reality than
Ben Horowitz. The truth is that war theater is expensive -- too expensive
these days for anyone to afford. Those characteristics of the "wartime CEO" he
demonstrates (as well as some of the "Peacetime CEO") -- besides more focus on
the present than the future, how many of them truly are proactively solving
the crisis rather than reactively panicking?

------
Swannie
For any sufficiently large organisation, they will have parts of the business
that are in "wartime" and parts that are in "peacetime".

The great CEO is able to manage their organisation to handle both. But odd
are, you won't see this. Because they know to do that effectively, their "all
hands" messaging has to be bland, tending towards peacetime messaging - or
risk spooking the peacetime parts of the business. But then when talking to
the wartime parts of the business, typically much smaller audiences, they are
aggressive, and encourage the single minded focus of the leader of that part
of the business.

Simon Wardley has many many good articles on this topic, often with the
military angle - because war is the ultimate expression of conflict, and
business are always in conflict with something.

------
jacobwilliamroy
Just fyi, this is not an article about being a CEO during an actual war, to
anyone in the audience scrolling through the comments trying to figure that
out. It's just about being a CEO when the competition is far behind, versus
being a CEO when the competition is very close.

------
godzilla82
I think this is applicable to not just CEOs, but project managers and
engineers too. Some PMs and Devs just cant function when things cool down.

------
magwa101
Oh the bloated self importance.

------
devmunchies
Some companies (e.g. Netflix) seem to operate as if there's always a war going
on. Its probably good for a lot of companies to adopt a wartime mentality
every once in a while.

~~~
aidenn0
The day it became obvious that streaming was the future, Netflix was
immediately at war, because at some point, in a streaming world, there is no
reason not for d2c streaming, and Netflix owned zero content.

~~~
reificator
Except that d2c streaming implies fragmentation, and as more streaming
services emerge it seems that piracy is back on the rise.

Perhaps Netflix offered something unique, or perhaps paying one provider and
using one app is more of a benefit than it's given credit for.

------
bibbitybobbity
War is not a great comparison to running a business. It's definitely not a
great premise for enabling what seems like a hostile work environment.

------
Whazzzup
this assumes that fighting with competitors for the same market is undoubtedly
the way to go rather than seaching for new opportunities.

~~~
SuoDuanDao
A tactical retreat certainly slots into the wartime metaphor, I think the
assumption is more that the CEO finds themselves fighting with competitors.

