The Campaign
The problem in front of me — and what I think it's going to take.
Yesterday, one of my leaders said it plainly: “My team is shit scared.”
He wasn’t complaining. He was reporting. His team is working harder than ever — heads down, putting in the hours. And they’re terrified. Worried AI will take over their jobs. Hearing that SaaS is dead. Getting no good news from anywhere. His exact words: “It feels like we’re working hard to get ourselves out of a job.”
I’ve been a CEO long enough to recognize that moment. I’ve also been honest enough, lately, to admit how I’ve handled it most of my career.
I sent an email.
For most of my career, I’ve treated fear like a weather event. Acknowledge it, give people the gear, wait for it to pass. It works — until the moment it doesn’t.
What I watched TH, my previous manager, do during COVID made me question whether that was ever really enough.
The world had collapsed in 2020. Every employee was carrying fear — professional and personal. Family. Health. Whether their kids would go back to school. Whether their parents would survive.
TH treated it like a campaign. Fireside chats. Virtual townhalls. All-hands meetings. Fun sessions designed just to let people breathe. Unlimited PTO — not just offered, actually used. No layoffs while the world was burning. Every occasion to show up: Zoom calls, flowers, cards, voice notes, showing up personally when someone was in a bad place.
Leadership was one of them. Not above the fear. In it.
Nobody called it a morale program. What it actually built was a safe environment where doing right by the people around you wasn’t awkward or soft. It was just how everyone operated.
The result: we grew at 20% that year. The market grew at 3-4%. Our nearest competitor topped out at 8%.
That delta isn’t a product story. It’s a leadership story.
Now I’m facing something different — and harder.
COVID was brutal. One enemy. Two years with no endpoint in sight. But there was still one enemy. You could name it, point at it, rally against it.
Today, think about what your people carry when they walk in on Monday. They’re running through five questions — whether they realize it or not:
Will I be ok?
Will I have a job?
Will my company be ok?
Will my neighborhood be ok?
Will our society and nation be ok?
During COVID, those questions were frightening — but most still had a fighting chance at a hopeful answer. The fear was acute. But so was the solidarity.
Today, too many of those questions land in the MAYBE or NO column. AI is displacing jobs in ways nobody fully understands. SaaS is getting commoditized. Macro pressure is grinding. Geopolitical instability is constant. The political ground keeps shifting.
No single enemy to name.
No visible endpoint.
When fear outnumbers hope across all five questions, it doesn’t stay home. It walks in with your people every morning. It shapes how much they invest, how much they risk, how much they trust.
What I keep coming back to is trust. Not programs. Not messaging. Built when people feel you’re carrying the same weight they are.
TH built that. What I’m trying to figure out is how to build it in a harder environment — without a single enemy to rally against and no finish line in sight.
I don’t know yet what this campaign looks like at full scale. One thing I know: it can’t be an email.
This time it looks like a multi-year effort — more challenging than what TH and leaders like him faced during COVID. And I’m at the beginning of it.
All I know right now is where it starts.
You listen first.
Listening is good. Action is better. Delivering a safe, productive employee environment is a never-finished task.