You’re Not a Wartime CEO.

I work with a lot of founders who say they’re in wartime mode and reference Ben Horowitz’s post about the topic.

Most of them are not.

They’re actually frustrated. They’re working hard. The job got harder. That’s not war¹. Hard work is a constant; an existential threat is a variable. That’s just the job.

Being frustrated and calling it wartime does not make it wartime. And it definitely does not give you license to yell at people, fire randomly, or run the company on pure anxiety.

Done right though, it can give you the ability to actually share exactly what you need to happen and what your expectations are.²

Here’s what the post actually said: peacetime is when your company has an advantage and the market is growing. Wartime is when you face an existential threat. One bullet. Must hit the target.

The reality is that most companies today do face real challenges and do need to change how they run.

While there are often more things than just this, you can start here.

If you are a frustrated or unsatisfied CEO, you can borrow this and channel your energy productively.

To do so, three things need to be true.

Name the enemy.

Not a feeling. Not “we need to be better.” A real, specific, external threat. A competitor eating your market. A metric that determines whether you survive. A window that’s closing.

You cannot rally a team around a vague sense of urgency. The enemy has to be concrete. Name it. Say it out loud. Make sure everyone knows what they’re fighting.

Earn the intensity.

Wartime CEOs push harder. They’re less tolerant. They get into details they’d normally delegate. All appropriate.

But your team needs to understand why. Not a speech about hustle. Not a rallying cry. A real explanation: what’s the threat, why does it matter right now, and what does winning look like.

I’ve seen founders deliver the intensity without the context. The team feels it. They just don’t know what to do with it. So they get nervous. They second-guess. They wait to see what the CEO is going to blow up next instead of doing their best work.

That’s the opposite of what you need.

Say the thing. We are behind on revenue and the fundraise window closes in 90 days. We are losing deals to one competitor and I need everyone focused on why. Be specific about the threat. Be specific about the goal. Then turn them loose.

Fill the backpack.

You can set an unrealistic bar. That’s fine. You can and should expect the best from your team. But then you have to support the people while they do it. You need to create the conditions for them to succeed³. Pay them right. Give them equity. Remove the obstacles. Point them in the right direction.

Demanding results without creating the conditions to deliver them is not wartime leadership. It’s just bad management.

Most founders I work with know something needs to change before they can name exactly what. That frustration is useful. It’s telling you something.

But the work is to turn it into a strategy, not a personality.

Name the enemy. Explain the stakes. Support the team. That’s wartime.

The job got hard. That's not a surprise. It was always going to get hard. The question is whether you're going to lead through it or just react to it. Wartime CEOs do the former. They name what's true, set a bar, and build the conditions for their team to clear it. That's the whole job.

If this resonated, forward it to a founder who needs to hear it. Or just reply and tell me what's actually going on in your business right now. I read every response.