---
id: "question-identifying-peacetime-generals"
type: "open-question"
source_timestamps: ["§ What Boards Must Demand"]
tags: ["talent-management", "leadership-assessment"]
related: ["concept-wartime-disposition", "quote-peacetime-general"]
resolution_path: "Development of specific psychometric assessments or bounded-experiment stress tests designed to reveal an executive's comfort with incomplete information and speed."
sources: ["governance"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-governance"
originDay: 7
articleStem: "hbr-sig-59-consensus-decision-making"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/04/decision-making-by-consensus-doesnt-work-in-the-ai-era"
sourceTitle: "Decision-Making by Consensus Doesn’t Work in the AI Era"
---
# How to Systematically Identify and Remove 'Peacetime Generals'

The authors note that incumbent CEOs are 'loath to pivot abruptly, to take on the team they painstakingly built, or to remove those that can't adapt.' While they provide the anecdote of firing a 'peacetime general' mid-turnaround (see [[quote-peacetime-general]]), they do **not** provide a scalable mechanism for boards or CEOs to systematically assess this psychological disposition — the [[concept-wartime-disposition]] — across an entire executive layer without destroying organizational stability.

**Resolution path:** Development of specific psychometric assessments or bounded-experiment stress tests designed to reveal an executive's comfort with incomplete information and speed.

**Calibration (from enrichment):** The wartime/peacetime distinction is a normative profile, not a validated psychometric construct — so any assessment tooling would need to be built and validated rather than adopted off the shelf.