The War and Peace playbook
Leadership, skill sets, and 'unprecedented times'
Welcome to the MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter! Thanks to the 85 fans who signed up for the newsletter.
I was on holidays last week so there was no newsletter sent out but we are back to our usual Monday morning slot today.
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I got, I got, I got, I got—
Loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA
Cocaine quarter piece, got war and peace inside my DNA
- DNA, Kendrick Lamar
Listeners of the podcast show will know that both myself and Pete are big fans of Ben Horowitz, not only as an ‘OG’ of venture capital with Andreessen Horowitz and lover of all things hip-hop, but also for his insightful content that he puts out through blog posts and books.
One of my favourite pieces is Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO and it is particularly relevant right now.
Ben believes that there are two types of CEOs: “Peacetime” and “Wartime” and each have different skillsets that suit different stages of your business.
On MoneyNeverSleeps, we have interviewed over 70+ CEOs and founders and one area that comes up time and again is the changing skillset required of the CEO as the company scales.
But the Covid-19 pandemic has forced CEOs to move rapidly from ‘Peacetime’ to ‘Wartime’ mode and it requires some skills that you as a CEO may not naturally possess.
Ben recognises how difficult a challenge this is:
“Mastering both wartime and peacetime skill sets means understanding the many rules of management and knowing when to follow them and when to violate them.”
So what can you do……
The Playbook
Here are some suggested areas to focus on as you look to evolve your leadership style through these difficult times:
Covid-19 has already had an immediate impact on your business. Nobody knows how long it will continue for.
What can you do?
Communicate…communicate…communicate with all of your stakeholders
Clients:
Talk to your clients regularly & understand their needs and pressures, especially as the pandemic may have resulted in new unmet needs that you can respond to.
Make sure they know you are doing everything you can to continue meeting their needs as a customer
Stay engaged with potential new clients - these sales might materialise again soon
Staff:
Keep your staff as up to date as possible, especially on funding, but it’s a weight you need to bear as the founder to insulate the team from the painstaking process of extending your runway with investors.
They will be worried about the viability of the business & their jobs
Make sure they know you are looking at all options
Make sure they know you care - nothing but authenticity works.
Investors:
Be upfront with investors about potential issues
Look for their advice/input
Prepare a plan for emergency
Ask the soup questions and prepare for the worst
Look at where you need to make changes to the business in order to survive
Look at where you can strip out unnecessary costs and nice-to-haves
Look at what government supports are available to help you (wage schemes/bounce back loans/grants, etc)
Prepare a plan for emergency/bridging funding if needed
Time for a new plan
Everything has changed. The old rules no longer apply. Whatever you thought you were going to get done for the rest of 2020 is going to be majorly impacted by a whole new set of assumptions
You need a new plan.
Focus on what you need to get you through key milestones (3/6/9/12 month timelines)
Empower your team to get involved where possible, those that can wear multiple hats should do just that.
Look at what is needed to keep existing clients happy and their all-important recurring revenue coming in
Look at where other revenue might come from - your sector may be severely impacted and you may need to pivot
Have a new plan for measuring KPI’s and bring in weekly/daily updates where needed
Use & involve your Board and advisors
This is no longer a time of peace.
This is a battle to save your company.
Everything is at stake, and everything is an option.
Tell me why I’m wrong…
- Eoin & Pete
(A reminder, you can get in touch with Pete for advisory support for your business)
Left Field
How do I describe ‘Left Field’? It’s a place to put the content (newsletters/articles, etc) that we have amassed over recent weeks or previous years that really make us think or change our thinking on a particular topic. All the content will offer an alternative view of some topic in financial services, technology or sport (or a combination of all three!)
Another wonderfully written story by Michael Lewis about a 15-year-old named Marcus Arnold who, by July 1 2001, was ranked No. 10 out of 150 experts in AskMe.com's criminal-law division.
The Askme Corporation was created in 1999 by former Microsoft employees. The software it sold enabled the big companies that bought it -- 3M, Procter & Gamble -- to create a private Web for their workers.
AskMe created a Web site and offered a version of its software to the wider public. The site, called AskMe.com, went up on the Web in February 2000 and quickly became the most heavily used of a dozen or so knowledge exchanges on the Internet. In its first year, the site had more than 10 million visitors.
Using the username LawGuy1975, Marcus appointed himself a legal expert and was logging onto the Internet solely to go to AskMe.com and deal with grown-ups' legal problems.
The more questions Marcus answered, the more people who logged onto the boards looking for legal advice wanted to speak only to him. In one two-week stretch he received 943 legal questions and answered 939.
Anyway, I won’t give away too much. Enjoy the article and feel free to get in touch to discuss more!
- Eoin
Can’t Sleep?
MoneyNeverSleeps podcast episode from this week:
Episode 98: Faye Walsh Drouillard from WakeUp Capital joins the show to talk about how her formative years and life experience drove her towards early stage impact investing, the two biggest challenegs we face as a global population and fuelling self confidence with humility, constant curiousity and a drive to do better.
Podcast Recommendation: Highy recommend checking out ‘This Week In Startups’ hosted by Jason Calacanis and a rotating group of guest experts as they bring you a weekly take on the best, worst, most outrageous and interesting stories from the world of entrepreneurship.
Book Recommendation: I have just finished reading ‘Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics’ by Peter Geoghegan. It is a fascinating story of how undisclosed donations have infiltrated British politics, undermining public faith in democracy and fuelling the rise of populism across the West.
Article/Newsletter Recommendation: if you haven’t heard of it already, check out ‘Maker Mind’. It’s a weekly newsletter about mindful productivity from Anne-Laure Le Cunff, the founder of Ness Labs.
This newsletter has been written by Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend
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