There is a particular silence that falls over a country under attack. Not the absence of noise — there are sirens, alerts, breaking news alerts, the dull thud of distant explosions. The silence is internal. It is the pause you make before every decision. The recalibration of what truly matters.

Living and working while your country is under attack is an exercise in duality. You answer your emails between checking on loved ones. You review board papers while scanning headlines. You join investor calls from rooms whose windows you have checked for safety. Life continues — because it must — but nothing is quite the same.  The psychological toll is real. Sleep becomes lighter. Attention fragments. Planning horizons shrink dramatically. Long-term strategy temporarily gives way to immediate continuity.

The first casualty is certainty.

Strategies built over years can dissolve overnight. Five-year plans become five-day plans. In stable times, leadership is about optimisation — improving margins, scaling operations, beating competitors. In crisis, leadership returns to its most basic responsibilities: protection, clarity, and continuity.

And yet work does not stop. In many ways, it becomes more important.

When a country is under attack, business is no longer just about performance. It becomes about stability and defiance. Every salary paid on time supports a household. Every customer served reinforces a sense that society is still functioning. Every commitment honoured sends a quiet message: we are still here.

But there is also a sense of unreality or dual reality.  You focus on liquidity while others focus on survival. Your office has electricity while someone else’s home does not. A delayed shipment momentarily frustrates you — until the wider reality returns.  And you might feel guilty that your experience is so different from others.  But feeling guilty can be useful when it sharpens your sense of responsibility.

In calmer times, leaders talk about resilience as a concept. In crisis, resilience reveals itself as something more practical: disciplined stewardship. The structures you built in stable times — culture, governance, financial discipline — are now what will determine whether your organisation holds together.  When disruption arrives, you simply draw on what you have already built.  You also discover that resilience is cumulative. It is built quietly in the years before crisis — through financial prudence, strong culture, capable leadership and institutional discipline.

For CEOs, founders and senior executives navigating such moments, a few principles become essential.

First: protect liquidity immediately.
Growth can return. Market share can be rebuilt. But if cash evaporates, survival becomes difficult. Reforecast constantly. Stress-test worst-case scenarios. Delay non-essential investment. Survival is not a retreat from strategy — it is the strategy.

Second: communicate more than feels necessary.
In crisis, uncertainty spreads faster than facts. Speculation fills the communications vacuum. Leaders do not need perfect answers, but leaders must be visible. Share what you know, what you don’t know, and what you will do next. Credibility compounds in crisis.

Third: put people before productivity.
Fear disrupts concentration. Trauma does not follow corporate calendars. Flexibility — remote work, adjusted expectations, mental health support — becomes an operational necessity, not generosity. Organisations that show humanity earn loyalty that no compensation package can buy.

Fourth: push decisions closer to the front line.
In stable environments, process ensures alignment. In unstable ones, process just slows survival. Empower capable managers to act without waiting for perfect information. Set clear guardrails, then trust people to move quickly.

Fifth: remind the organisation why it exists.
In moments of collective stress, people search for meaning. Companies that articulate their role — supporting communities, sustaining employment, maintaining essential services — give their teams a reason to keep going beyond quarterly targets.

Leadership in such circumstances becomes less about vision presentations and more about presence. Your team does not expect certainty; they expect steadiness. They watch how you behave. They listen carefully to what you say (and how you say it) — and what you avoid saying.

Operationally, the adjustments are constant. Backup infrastructure is tested. Supply chains are rerouted. Cash is monitored daily. Crisis teams meet repeatedly.  Young managers rise with remarkable maturity. Innovation accelerates — not from ambition, but necessity. But beyond operational pressure lies something deeper: perspective.

You realise that business and society are inseparable. Balance sheets represent families. Companies are communities. Competitors cooperate. You take pride in small acts of normalcy. In offices reopening and in teams showing up despite the uncertainty.

It is exhausting. It is sobering. It is clarifying.

And it leaves one lasting lesson: leadership is rarely defined in moments of comfort. It is defined in adversity — by the choices you make when stability disappears, and by the institutions you quietly strengthen so that when peace eventually returns, something resilient still stands.

Alain Bejjani’s new book Next: Leading through the new realities will be published by White Fox Publishing on 31 March 2026