If you haven’t read The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, I highly recommend it. In the book, Ben introduces the concepts of wartime and peacetime leadership—two distinct modes that managers operate in during periods of crisis or growth within their organization.

Wartime leadership arises from internal challenges like severe outages, incidents, competitive threats, aggressive deadlines, or external instability. In wartime, a leader must shift into crisis management mode, prioritizing quick fixes, damage control, and making decisions with limited time and resources. The focus should be on creating clarity, transparency, and alignment through effective communication, which may involve daily routines and public channels. The goal is to maintain a sense of control and calm within the team. Wartime also offers valuable opportunities for team members to grow and learn—don’t let those moments go to waste.

In peacetime, a leader can focus on long-term initiatives such as scalability, team development, innovation, and allowing more time for exploration.

Here’s my take: As a leader in wartime, the priority should be on fostering a controlled and calm environment (bringing a sense of peacetime) that enables efficient execution under pressure. Conversely, in peacetime, a leader should inject some adrenaline (introducing a sense of wartime) by holding the team accountable to ambitious goals.

Startups and growing companies often operate in survival mode, so it’s crucial to ensure that team execution remains sustainable by balancing expectations with the team’s true capacity and throughput.