Agreed that Google's facing a serious threat and that a CEO approaches things differently in that situation than when everything's booming. I'm not sure about the peacetime/wartime stuff though. First of all if you want to use military analogies, Google has been at war with Microsoft since 2005 or earlier, and with Apple for a few years as well; now they've got another major front with Facebook -- and they're losing. It's a very different situation than Intel's, so the CEO may need to have different skills and attitude.<p>And then the list of differences between a wartime and peacetime CEO is just silly. "Peacetime CEO spends time defining the culture. Wartime CEO lets the war define the culture" ... hmm, seems to me that George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Winston Churchill all did a lot of culture defining, and so did Andy Grove.<p>It's interesting though to look at the list in light of his self-description that "One could easily argue that I failed as a peacetime CEO, but succeeded as a wartime one." To me it seems like he's describing the CEO he became, and arguing that it was optimal to become that way because they were at war. And quite possibly it <i>was</i> optimal for him and his company in that situation. But going from there to "these are the characteristics a CEO needs when at peace/at war" is over-generalizing.
There are some insights in this article. In fact modern time companies were originally formed in a very similar way as military units. Although in military when losing a battle, an incompetent general can lose his army and/or his life, a CEO failed a company likely still took a nice package away.
I imagine being a wartime CEO is going to get increasingly more challenging for public relations since the company is already so dominant. Even here on HN, people don't see the urgency of Google's situation. It's not enough to be on top. You've got to be way ahead.
Apart from a CEO shift, what evidence if any exists that Page will be a Wartime CEO? The analogy with Jobs looks baseless to me, Google is making huge profits and with 6000 new employees coming in 2011 they are hardly in a war. Obviously they have their challenges, like being late in the social game, but their core product is still unendangered.<p>The whole text, while captivating and well written, feels like a plastered on narrative.