---
id: "quote-peacetime-general"
type: "quote"
source_timestamps: ["§ What Boards Must Demand"]
tags: ["leadership", "crisis-management"]
related: ["concept-wartime-disposition"]
speaker: "Jonathan Rosenthal and Neal Zuckerman"
speakers: ["Jonathan Rosenthal", "Neal Zuckerman"]
quote: "We once encountered a CEO mid-turnaround who argued, with genuine conviction, that his talents were better suited for growth than crisis. \\\\\\\"That's like being a peacetime general,\\\\\\\" we told him. He was replaced the next day."
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"
---
# The Peacetime General

> "We once encountered a CEO mid-turnaround who argued, with genuine conviction, that his talents were better suited for growth than crisis. 'That's like being a peacetime general,' we told him. He was replaced the next day."
> — [[entity-jonathan-rosenthal]] and [[entity-neal-zuckerman]]

An anecdote illustrating the psychological mismatch between legacy executives and the demands of exponential change — the negative image of the [[concept-wartime-disposition]]. The CEO was replaced the next day because his mental model was anchored to a non-existent, stable world. This anecdote motivates the open problem in [[question-identifying-peacetime-generals]]: how to detect this disposition at scale before it does damage.