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Ben Horowitz co-founded Loudcloud in 1999, survived the dot-com crash, dodged bankruptcy three times, and sold his company for $1.6 billion. The Struggle, Wartime CEO, Lead Bullets: three concepts that describe what classic management literature politely leaves out. By Mounir Telkass, founder of MT-Transition.
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Ben Horowitz co-founded Loudcloud in 1999, survived the dot-com crash, dodged bankruptcy three times, and sold his company for $1.6 billion. His book is not a management manual. It is a testimony to what it really means to run an organization in crisis — including everything classic literature politely leaves out.
Horowitz does not hand out recipes. He describes situations where every option is bad, and explains how to get through them without lying to yourself. For a transition director taking the reins of a struggling company, this book is less a read than a recognition.
“The Struggle is not failure, but it causes failure. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are a liar.”
The Struggle is the name Horowitz gives to the psychological state of a leader in crisis: sleepless nights, decisions that loop endlessly, doubt about your own competence, isolation. Not a weakness — a given of the problem.
Most executives arriving on a difficult assignment make the same mistake: they try to hide The Struggle. The result: they make decisions to look decisive rather than to be correct. The industrial director on a turnaround mission at a plant losing 2 million euros a month does not have the right to claim that “the situation is under control” before it actually is. Recognizing The Struggle — not publicly, but internally — is the precondition for any lucid decision.
A production site, packaging sector, 180 employees. The transition director takes over a plant with an 11% non-conformity rate. First week: he calls the leadership team together and says, “we are in trouble, and I do not yet have all the answers.” Unexpected result: team leaders start surfacing information they had been sitting on for six months.
“In peacetime, leaders can focus on the big picture and delegate. In wartime, a leader must be everywhere.”
Horowitz draws a sharp line between two modes of leadership. In peacetime — growth, a favorable market, a stable organization — the good leader delegates and builds processes. In wartime — existential threat, turnaround, company survival — he must be operational, fast, sometimes brutal.
A transition manager cannot be Wartime CEO and Peacetime CEO at the same time. His mission is precisely to identify which mode the organization needs from him. A mid-sized industrial company, 400 employees, mechanical engineering sector. The CFO in place manages cash as if the company were still growing. The transition director who takes over general management restructures cash-flow reporting to a weekly cycle by the second week.
“There are no silver bullets for this, only lead bullets.”
In management films, the leader makes ONE courageous decision that turns the situation around. In the reality Horowitz describes, companies climb out of crisis through an accumulation of correct decisions, often small, often invisible, over a long period. The transition manager who arrives looking for “the lever” misses the point entirely.
An industrial subsidiary of a European group, automotive sector, chronic losses for 3 years. The third leader — a transition manager — does not launch a plan. He spends the first two weeks understanding why costs are running over across 14 automotive production lines. Then he addresses the 14 problems, one by one. Back to break-even in 8 months.
A French industrial subsidiary, 220 employees, process equipment sector. Operating loss of 3.4 million euros for the fiscal year. The parent company appoints a transition director with a 9-month mandate.
Week 1 — The Struggle. The director spends 4 days reading the accounts, quality reports, and executive committee minutes from the past 18 months. He acknowledges, alone, that the situation is more degraded than the initial brief suggested.
Week 2 — Wartime CEO. He cancels the Monday executive committee meeting — replaced by a daily 20-minute check-in with the 4 operations directors.
Months 2 to 8 — Lead bullets. No 47-slide plan. A list of 23 actions, prioritized by cash impact. The first 8 actions generate 1.1 million euros in savings.
Naming the difficulty is an act of lucidity, not weakness. The Struggle exists in every difficult mission. Denying it costs more than accepting it.
The leadership mode must match the situation, not your habits. A Peacetime CEO in a crisis context does damage without knowing it.
There is no single big decision that fixes everything. There are correct decisions, made continuously, over time.
MT-Transition places industrial transition managers trained in these methods, ready to step in within a few weeks.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things is not a recipe book. It is a reminder that leading an organization through crisis never looks like a business-school case study — and that clarity on this point is, in itself, already an advantage.
Mounir Telkass — MT-Transition, industrial transition management firm.
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