Every industry has pockets of growth and downturns, but the recent years have shown us what a whole new level of leadership looks like. This brings up the conversation this week, which is the Peacetime vs. Wartime CEO. Hallie and I first identify what it even means to be a Peacetime vs. Wartime leader, and how to know which personality traits and characteristics go with each. We discuss the external factors that come to play in knowing what type of CEO you need to be to best lead and have fun breaking down the different strategies according to Ben Horowitz’s book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things.
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Timestamps
[2:00] Would you buy a piece of real estate at 30 times its revenue?
[5:58] We are in Wartime CEO mode right now, and probably will be for the next couple of years.
[6:11] Peacetime leadership in business is generally when the business has a competitive advantage and the market is growing. During this time, you can afford to make mistakes and you don’t have to operate quite as fast as you do in Wartime.
[7:05] Wartime in business is when the business is facing an immediate threat from a competitor, the economic climate, or a major market shift.
[12:20] If you’re a Wartime leader, during a time that warrants Peacetime, you’re probably going to anger people and have them leave because they don’t understand the way you think. If you are a Peacetime leader and go into a Wartime environment, you may not get anything done or find yourself in a big culture clash.
[14:45] A few takeaways from Peacetime vs. Wartime leaders from The Hard Thing:
- Peacetime CEOs know that proper protocol leads to winning, and a Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win.
- Peacetime CEOs focus on the big picture and empower people to make detailed decisions. A Wartime CEO cares about a speck of dust on a gnats acid that interferes with the prime directive.
- A Peacetime CEO builds scalable high-volume recruiting machines. And a wartime CEO does that but also builds HR organizations that can execute layoffs.
- A Peacetime CEO spends the time defining the culture; for Wartime CEOs the war defines the culture.
- A Peacetime CEO always has a contingency plan. A Wartime CEO knows that sometimes you gotta roll a “hard six.”
- A Peacetime CEO knows what to do with a big advantage. A Wartime CEO is paranoid.
- A Peacetime CEO strives not to use profanity. A Wartime CEO sometimes uses profanity purposefully.
