Ben Horowitz opined over a decade ago about the differences between wartime and peacetime CEOs. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how this framework also applies to communicators.
In the last three-and-a-half years, we’ve seen companies move from COVID panic to the roaring bull market of 2021 and 2022 to the recent contraction and layoffs. And as companies’ business strategy has evolved, so too has their communications strategy.
Definitions
For the most part, I think Horowitz’s definitions of wartime and peacetime hold up in the context of comms:
Peacetime in business means those times when a company has a large advantage vs. the competition in its core market, and its market is growing. In times of peace, the company can focus on expanding the market and reinforcing the company’s strengths.
In wartime, a company is fending off an imminent existential threat. Such a threat can come from a wide range of sources including competition, dramatic macro economic change, market change, supply chain change, and so forth.
We often think of wartime as a macroeconomic condition (like COVID or a recession) or an industry-wide one (like a crowded competitive field). But wartime can also be specific to an individual company. A company is in wartime when it is facing regulatory scrutiny or an impending lawsuit or reports of a lascivious executive or leaks about cost cutting or…
Peacetime Communicator/Wartime Communicator
Peacetime communicators are focused on long-term company vision. Wartime communicators are focused on crisis response.
Peacetime communicators focus on revenue and growth. Wartime communicators talk about profit and responsible spend.
Peacetime communicators are running a marathon. Wartime communicators are sprinters.
Peacetime communicators are product and consumer comms leaders. Wartime communicators are corporate and policy comms operatives used to working under siege.
Peacetime communicators are focused on the story magazines will tell in six months. Wartime communicators are focused on the story a reporter will tweet tomorrow.
Peacetime communicators are focused on reward. Wartime communicators are focused on risk.
Peacetime communicators are focused on employer brand and recruiting people into the organization with promises of future growth. Wartime communicators are focused on internal comms, keeping existing employees laser-focused on what needs to be done in the present to stay alive.
Peacetime communicators are focused on telling plentiful stories. Wartime communicators are focused on telling accurate ones.
Peacetime communicators work closely with sales. Wartime communicators work with legal and finance.
Peacetime communicators build narratives the way grandmothers build flavor in a sauce: slowly simmering over time, taste-testing and making small adjustments along the way. Wartime communicators build narratives like Bobby Flay: in a pressure cooker.
Can a communicator be both?
As with CEOs, I think the answer is “yes, but it’s hard.” It’s extremely difficult for an individual to be as good at telling long-lead stories as they are at rapid response, as good at conveying product vision to consumers as at getting investors excited about numbers.
Given this reality, startups and smaller companies more generally should be mindful about their current needs when they bring on a single comms person. Do you need to evangelize your growth, or mitigate the risk that a regulatory body cuts you off at the knees? Be brutally honest about what is the top priority, because no one is going to do both equally. And be equally honest with your hires that your priorities may shift as you grow, which may necessitate layering them or bringing on a peer to handle the other half of the equation or even letting them go. (Many wartime communicators I know actually prefer to have short stints at companies in crisis, with fallow periods in between to recuperate.)
At larger companies, communicators can build teams that are well-equipped to handle both. No comms team that I know of is actually divided into wartime and peacetime (imagine!), but there are proxies: corporate and consumer comms; rapid response and storytelling; policy and tech comms. If it’s not possible to build out these capabilities in-house, agencies and consultants can sometimes fill the gap…but I’d argue you’ll get better results if you focus on building out the right capabilities in-house and using agencies as a complement to your in-house talent rather than as a stopgap. It’s hard to manage agencies when you don’t have the requisite expertise to guide or gauge their work. (Though in my experience, individual consultants can work if you integrate them into your team fully for a set period of time.)
It’s also important not to forget to build for wartime during peacetime and vice-versa. It’s easy to avoid making crisis plans when you’re on the good news train, or to stop investing in new reporter relationships when you’re spending all day on the phone with the same three reporters all writing about your upcoming legal showdown. But take the long view; you don’t want to win the battle only to lose the war.
So what?
Right now, we’re in a period of macro wartime, with companies laying off communicators in droves.
But there’s reason for optimism all the same. Startups need now more than ever to tell stories of optimism and growth to investors (peacetime skills) with an acknowledgement that headwinds are strong right now (wartime skills). Big and small companies alike are investing heavily in new technology like AI; telling good AI stories requires a healthy balance of long-term vision as well as product and thought leadership know-how (peacetime skills), plus an eye toward potential crises and a way to combat accusations such spend is frivolous in the current economic climate (wartime skills). And many companies are continuing to grow, albeit more slowly, without a crisis in sight.
Put more bluntly: We need peacetime communicators even in wartime (and vice versa).
For those who’ve been laid off, homing in on your own wartime/peacetime preferences can help you better understand what roles and companies might play to your strengths and affinities — and ultimately help you make the case for why you’re the right hire not just in spite of the current climate, but because of it.