[HN Gopher] Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO (2011)
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Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO (2011)
Author : tosh
Score : 98 points
Date : 2020-03-12 19:02 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (a16z.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (a16z.com)
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450669
| raldi wrote:
| What a treasure the long life of the HN archives has become.
| magwa101 wrote:
| Oh the bloated self importance.
| vearwhershuh wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| Totally agree. I think to some degree it started with the first
| Iraq war when the first GPS bombs made war look like a cool
| video game. I think it's a very bad trend that eventually will
| lower the threshold to real war. Same for torture. Movies have
| made torture look cool and useful.
| nancycut10 wrote:
| Whatsapp hacker : https://www.hackerslist.co/post-new-job/
| m_a_g wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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.
| Whazzzup wrote:
| this assumes that fighting with competitors for the same market
| is undoubtedly the way to go rather than seaching for new
| opportunities.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| In the end it's peacetime leaders who build a country for the
| long term and make it better. War leaders are getting too
| much respect.
| [deleted]
| ska wrote:
| > management has got addicted to permanent panic
|
| This is a classic red flag. One of the few easily visible from
| the trenches, too.
| whatshisface wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| sharmanaetor wrote:
| * chock-full of projection
| kfarr wrote:
| Agreed, not sure how well this has aged for a variety of
| reasons. If you really follow these things during "war times"
| most SaaS companies will attrit their core competent staff and
| be left with no army. Not a winning move.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| I also think this article has the wrong take; Eric Schmidt was
| always training wheels for Larry to learn how to run a multi-
| billion dollar company. I don't think he trusted himself and he
| honestly seems like a pretty risk-averse guy. Realistically he
| hasn't been a "Wartime CEO" at all; Google has made a lot of
| money by making a lot of safe choices. But there are lots of
| safe choices to be made when you've built a moat as big as they
| have.
| [deleted]
| irjustin wrote:
| 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.
| devmunchies wrote:
| 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.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| I think it needs to be a deliberate choice with an
| understanding of upsides and downsides of the approach. As far
| as I know Netflix knows what they are doing. Other companies
| often don't.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| enitihas wrote:
| 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.
| thinkingkong wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| >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
|
| ;)
| abakker wrote:
| Some of us like this in our leaders. I guess I subconsciously
| want to hear the truth, and assume less subterfuge if people
| are not using political speech. Kindness and political speech
| have me second guessing, which is more uncomfortable than
| taking criticism and moving on.
| [deleted]
| bluntfang wrote:
| Why not be honest about in during the interview process so
| that they can choose to not be around you if they don't like
| your management style? Save you time and money on hiring
| people who aren't a good fit.
| ska wrote:
| Mostly, over time, you get the team you deserve ;)
| throwawayAF wrote:
| Is that what you do at mLogica?
| mathattack wrote:
| If the ship is on fire, you need the urgency that comes with
| the wartime CEO. But it kills the people during peace.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
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