Long Live the Ski-Time CEO

Dec 15

Why the wartime/peacetime idea is failing, and what to do about it

For years, Silicon Valley CEOs and investors have held the simplistic belief that CEOs have two modes: wartime and peacetime. Wartime CEOs take no prisoners and believe sacrifice and loss are central to victory. Peacetime CEOs operate in maintenance mode—coasting along and allowing the team to coast too, without much risk-taking or response to external pressure. In recent years full-time wartime CEOs have garnered attention aplenty, prompting many new founders and CEOs to adopt severe personas, hold unreasonable expectations, and keep their teams operating full steam ahead at all times.

But despite what the media and several highly publicized CEOs (we won’t name names…) might lead people to believe, staying in either extreme for too long is detrimental for teams and companies, resulting in a depleted workforce. What we need instead is a kind of middle ground—something we and our clients at Velocity call the ski-time CEO.

So, what is a ski-time CEO? What makes full-time wartime and peacetime CEOs so ineffective to begin with? And how can you change modes to become a ski-time CEO bringing energy—and long-term outcomes—to your team? Read on, leaders, read on.

The problem with full-time wartime CEOs

Wartime CEOs lead by fear. Operating with the belief that everything, including employees’ jobs, is on the line at all times, they instill that belief and fear in their employees by creating intensity around everything and fostering a cut-throat, consistently fast-paced work environment. Everything is always at an 11.

The impulse to do this is both personal and cultural. It comes from the need to control things, an addiction to stress, and the mythology that extreme CEOs are the most successful. These are things we praise in our society.

Ultimately, however, instead of revving teams up, this approach drives extreme anxiety and stress among teams, which causes other long-term problems: the inability to make strong decisions, team infighting, backing away from challenges instead of leaning into them, and talent flight. Teams step on each other’s toes, vying for the CEO’s stamp of approval in order to stay alive, until the powder keg explodes. Every company has moments of challenge, and there’s nothing wrong with creating urgency—but the kind of urgency is important: Are you driving people to lean into the challenge or back away from it? When it’s wartime all the time, at some point people start to back away.

The problem with full-time peacetime CEOs

Peacetime CEOs, by contrast, avoid conflict and urgency at all costs. They tend to be tinkerers and navel-gazers: fearful of making mistakes and worried about others’ perceptions, they shut out external pressures, remain biased against action, and micromanage their teams’ work. We see a lot of peacetime CEOs zone in on research, for example—and get a lot out of it—but then struggle to move things forward and actually commercialize their products.

While this leadership style doesn’t create stress in teams, it doesn’t foster passion for the work either. And if people don’t have passion for their work, they’ll find other places to put it. Ultimately, peacetime leadership can lull employees into a state of apathy and boredom, in which they wait for direction and do only the bare minimum.

This environment can also cause more internal cultural issues. Without external pressures or intensity in the work to worry about, people look for, or sometimes actively create, drama on the inside. Does that lead to better cultures and greater product success? Definitely not.

The happy medium: Ski-time CEOs

Instead of operating in one extreme or the other, ski-time CEOs keep things varied but exciting. They slalom with the terrain—sometimes creating more intensity and sometimes more rest and recovery, depending on the circumstances. These leaders help their teams grow beyond their limits, make work thrilling and fun, and help people feel like they’re doing great work—without anxiety pushing them down the mountain, or apathy keeping them on the chair lift.

Why skiing, though? Because skiing is a sport that challenges you while also being endlessly fun. There are always ways to improve and numerous variables that can affect you in the moment. It requires your focus and keeps you on your toes (or, hopefully, your skis), but you’re rewarded along the way. In the ski world, we talk about going “steep and deep”: skiing steep slopes in deep snow. The combination creates a high risk of failure and injury, but it’s more exhilarating than frightening.

This is the ideal dynamic that leaders should endeavor to create. You want your employees to feel challenged enough that the work pushes them to the edge of their skills, but not so challenged that they feel discouraged and bad at their jobs. You want them to feel excited enough that they push themselves and find flow. You want them to understand that there will be difficult days on steeper slopes and easier days at après-ski, but that neither will last forever. And either way, they will (almost) always have fun.

What teams, companies, and CEOs gain when they operate in ski-time mode

Think about it: People come back from war with PTSD. People come back from ski trips with great memories and wild stories. Great memories create tight teams, which create better results. In ski mode, people become much more independent and creative at work, make better decisions, and bring more ideas to the table. They stay inspired and engaged. And because teams end up operating at a higher level and grow more invested in the work, companies—both their internal cultures and their bottom lines—thrive.

CEOs and their teams both benefit by the emotional effects as well. The emotional externalities from wartime and peacetime leadership are significant. People who come home from work either stressed to the max or severely low-energy are worse partners, parents, and citizens. They become angry, depressed, and anxious; they lose confidence. They can’t show up at their best. People who feel valued, purposeful, and challenged at work, however, tend to gain confidence and experience far less anxiety. As a result, they are much better parents, partners, and citizens. By creating an environment that gives people purpose, you can help them show up for their loved ones, their communities, and themselves.

It’s time for some skiing

Post-pandemic we’ve seen that the entire workforce is craving more meaning, more excitement, and more engagement. They want to care about their work, and they want to work in environments where their leaders also care about them. It’s not the time for only war or only peace. It’s the time for a good slalom—and a wild, exhilarating, deep, steep ski.

Edward Sullivan