The Resilient Entrepreneur, Edition #63
Hi there
I hope you had a great week!
Here are the topics in today's edition:
- No Single Hero: The Swiss Way to Lead a Company
- Dad, the Lights Are Out: 36 Hours Without Electricity, But Full of Life Lessons
- Why Switzerland Relies on Ordinary People in Extraordinary Roles
Please reach out if you have comments, questions, or suggestions for articles!
Talk soon 👋
Tom
KickKerK
LEADERSHIP FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
No Single Hero: The Swiss Way to Lead a Company
What entrepreneurs can learn from Switzerland’s centuries-old model of shared leadership
Since the incorporation of our Republic in 1291, Switzerland deeply detests central power and ruling classes.
In contrast to most other countries, we don’t have a real head of state. Instead, we have a Federal Council of seven persons elected indirectly through parliament. The chair of the Federal Council is rotated every year, with the chair taking over the “presidency” — which is much better described as primus inter pares: The first amongst equals.
Believe it or not, our Armed Forces were also led under that system for a long time. The defense minister chaired the National Defense Commission, consisting of all seven three-star generals plus the armaments director. One of the three-star generals was the Chief of the General Staff. And because Switzerland only elects a General in wartime, the Chief of the General Staff was the commander-in-chief of all troops in service under our unique active reserve system. He was also the primus inter pares within the National Defense Commission.
What does this unique leadership model mean for entrepreneurs? Let’s look at some aspects in more detail.
Disadvantages
For many readers, I’m sure it is the first time they hear of the primus inter pares leadership model. The initial reaction to new things is often repulsive, which is why I’m starting to discuss the disadvantages of this leadership model first.
One core leadership principle is that responsibility cannot be delegated. So you might ask who is responsible in the primus inter pares leadership model — is it the primus inter pares or the entire leadership team?
A second disadvantage is the speed of decision. If the primus inter pares cannot make a decision without consulting with the entire leadership team first, decisions might come too late.
Leadership is still heavily personified — a leadership team and its primus inter pares are not as visible as a strong, charismatic leader.
Advantages
In a world in turmoil, the disadvantages of the primus inter pares leadership system are advantages: Who wants erratic, egomanic leaders who constantly insult and mistreat people? Who wants unreflected decisions that affect entire economies by a single post on social media?
In my view, the biggest advantage of the primus inter pares leadership system is that decisions are made jointly: Discussions can be contradictory and hefty behind closed doors before a decision is made, but once the decision is made, the leadership team represents the group’s opinion. One for all, all for one.
Decisions are not just better when they are made by a group of individuals with different perspectives, it’s also much easier to implement those decisions when the entire leadership supports the decisions.
It also keeps leaders humble — no single individual can make good decisions in our complex, messy world. No single individual is competent in all aspects relevant to an organization.
Application to Entrepreneurship
At Yonder, we recently changed our leadership team and used this as an opportunity to move towards the primus inter pares leadership system: The CEO of a company is just the primus inter pares of the leadership team.
Of course, each member of our leadership team still has their area of expertise and leads a team: Sales, customer success, product, development. But there are many cross-functional leadership aspects in a company — finance, partner management, human resources. These are the topics we jointly discuss and make decisions on — with everyone’s opinion being weighted equally.
The best thing about the primus inter pares leadership system for a 25-person company? If not everything depends on a single leader, you have more leadership redundancy in a resource-constrained setup.
CRISIS MANAGEMENT FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
Dad, the Lights Are Out: 36 Hours Without Electricity, But Full of Life Lessons
What a snowstorm in Zermatt taught my kids about crisis, creativity, and staying calm when everything goes dark.
Last week, unusally heavy snowfalls in Zermatt blocked roads and trains, caused trees to collapse onto power lines, and cut the village off from civilization for three days. No electricity, no fresh supplies.
I was in Zermatt at that time. Alone with two of my kids.
I knew that those days would be days of bad weather. The kids announced that they would play Monopoly all day long during those non-skiing days, and I thought I could quietly work away on some long-delayed tasks.
How wrong I was. I woke up on Thursday, 17th April 2025, realizing that both power and 5G network were gone. A glance out of the window made clear what happened: During the night, more than 50cm of fresh snow fell and it was still snowing relentlessly. At the end of the day, more than 1m of fresh snow should have fallen — in mid-April.
I started acting like I normally act in such situations — observe, orient, decide, act. Heck, I’ve learned and practiced making decisions under pressure and in crises in my 20+ years as an active reserve officer in the Swiss Armed Forces. I even teach crisis management, for example to IMD MBA students.
This time, there was a new component in the equation: Kids.
The crisis was severe enough for them to learn a few lessons, yet not severe enough that they were traumatized. An ideal situation for real learning. And Dad hat plenty of time to teach them, as he couldn’t work anyway as his laptop was running out of battery quicker than electricity returned.
Here is what my kids learned in those three days.
1. Scenario Thinking
For the kids, the most important thing was not when electricity would return, but when we could return home. Easter was coming, and my wife and our third child were at home, and the kids wanted to celebrate Easter together as a family and with their grandparents.
Therefore, we discussed what options there exist to get out of Zermatt:
- If electricity wouldn’t return before Saturday, there was a high chance that we would miss the Easter celebration. There were thousands of tourists trapped in Zermatt, all of them needed to get out of Zermatt as quickly as possible to catch their flight as soon as electricity and traffic would return. We didn’t want to queue for hours. We agreed that we would return D+2 after electricity returned — no matter what day “D” was.
- If electricity returned faster than expected and the ski lifts reopened fast, we agreed to spend the first day with electricity on the slopes, even if there wouldn’t be any queues to travel out of Zermatt. Easter was still a few days away, and the weather forecast was blue skies after the hefty snowfalls.
- If electricity wouldn’t return fast but the roads would open, we could take the 1-hour walk from Zermatt to Täsch and catch a replacement bus to get to Visp, and then onwards by train.
We ended up with a combination of scenarios 1 and 2 — electricity returned Friday night, we spent Saturday skiing, and travelled home on Sunday in a half-empty train.
2. Creativity
Crises require creativity. How do we make coffee without electricity? What can we eat if we can’t cook? Where do we get information if we don’t have internet access?
We ended up making coffee with an inverted fondue oven and a few candles. We ate bread and dry meat, like the mountain farmers a century ago. And we walked to the town hall twice a day to get the latest information on a flipchart.
The crisis wasn’t severe enough that there wasn’t room for fun. The kids said they would tell their classmates that they had to kill a deer with a Swiss army knife and grill it on candles to avoid starving to death.
I reminded the kids how little it takes before they would kill and eat an animal, even without grilling.
3. Support
A crisis is a situation of deficiency: Nobody has everything they need. But many people have some things they need. The key question is to ask yourself who can support you, and who you can support.
Can we charge Dad’s laptop in a hotel connected to the backup electricity grid in exchange for having a drink in the hotel bar? Can we trade a hot cup of coffee from the fondue oven against something else we don’t have?
Are there people in the village that are worse off than we are? Do the trapped tourists need help? Are there any lonely people in the neighborhood we could invite to play cards in the dark?
One for all, all for one.
That’s the motto that’s engraved in the ceiling of the Swiss parliamentary building. Nothing represents Switzerland in a crisis better than this motto.
4. Wait
A crisis unfolds fast, but it can take longer than expected to resolve. In Zermatt, both the weather and the lack of information mandated one thing: Patience. Hard for adults, but even harder for kids.
After one day, the 5G network returned, and mobile phones could be charged at an emergency contact point on a power generator. That meant that we didn’t have to rely on flipchart information from the town hall any longer. At the same time, checking the mobile phone every 5 minutes would just have drained the battery faster without any additional information. The kids realized that checking for updates on the mobile phone would make the crisis go away faster, but would mean two trips a day to the emergency contact point to recharge the phones instead of just one.
5. Preparation
My kids love creating lists for all sorts of things. During the blackout, they started compiling a list of emergency kit we would have to buy after the crisis to be ready for a next blackout. A generator. Lots of candles. Power banks. A gas stove to cook pasta. More food supplies.
They also realized that we would have been just fine at home in our self-sufficient house — because Mum and Dad prepared years ago, even at the price of being laughed at by many people.
6. Priorities
The day before the blackout hit, the kids wanted to watch a Champions League football game on my iPad. Because the match was played late at night, I said no. I promised them they could check the results in the next morning on my iPad.
When they woke up the next morning to severe weather and no electricity, priorities shifted from football results to more basic needs.
And within mintues after electricity was restored two days later, the kids said: “Dad, can we check the result of that Champions League football game?”
INSPIRATION FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
Why Switzerland Relies on Ordinary People in Extraordinary Roles
From mountain villages to parliament and armed forces, the active reserve system powers the nation
You’re a small nation high up in the mountains.
You aspire to build an orderly and successful society.
You value your independence highly.
Yet you have limited resources. What can you do?
A very long time ago, Switzerland chose to organize its society using what we call the active reserve system. This system is still the cornerstone of our society today—in security, politics, schools, and associations.
As unique as the active reserve system is, its benefits and challenges are unique.
1. Benefits for Society
From a strategic perspective, the active reserve system has three closely interconnected benefits.
First, not having a standing army and not having a standing parliament is highly efficient: There aren’t any professional soldiers and politicians to pay constantly. Soldiers are called up in times of crisis or war, they serve as long as needed, and are sent home again when their mission is accomplished. Likewise, politicians gather for the parliamentary sessions four times a year, only to follow their original professions in between parliamentary sessions.
Second, because soldiers and politicians are ordinary citizens, there is no detached caste of people who control the state. Every citizen can serve in the Armed Forces. Every citizen can be elected into political office.
And third, power is dispersed, with no individual amassing too much power. You can’t be a member of parliament and an army general at the same time. But you can be an army general first, and serve in parliament after quitting the Armed Forces. Or vice-versa. But for lower-level functions, it’s possible to serve in the Armed Forces and on the local school council at the same time: If that wouldn’t be possible, we wouldn’t have enough people to fill all those active reserve jobs in security, politics, schools and associations.
2. Benefits in a Complex World
In a complex world, everything is connected. There is no single entity or person who can solve a problem alone. The active reserve system brings together people from different walks of life, with different expertise and experience. It’s always refreshing to see the solutions a group of seemingly unconnected people come up with: Their professional experience and different perspectives help them finding pragmatic solutions they wouldn’t find if they all had the same backgrounds.
Since the incorporation of our Republic in 1291, we deeply detest central power and ruling classes. So by empowering groups to take decentralized decisions, we are not just making use of the potential of our society, but also speeding up decisions.
3. Benefits during Crises
Our world has become so complex and interconnected that it takes a literal flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil to set off a tornado in Texas. Crises often arise due to seemingly unconnected events that lead to chaos and disruption.
I experienced such a crisis just last week. Unusally heavy snowfalls in Zermatt blocked roads and trains, caused trees collapsing onto power lines, and the village being cut off from civilization for three days with no electricity.
That was the moment for the active reserve system. Besides the professional police who enforced law and order, the active-reserve fire brigade helped clear roads and cut fallen trees. The active-reserve civil protection service ramped up an emergency power aggregate, allowing the population to charge their mobile phones and get hot water or a warm soup. Countless volunteers helped care for the trapped tourists. And those hotels connected to the emergency power system assisted the civil protection service with additional possibilities to charge electronic devices and get warm food.
You can call it the active reserve system, you can call it solidarity, it doesn’t matter. The main point is that this system works in real-life crisis: There was no hectic, no violence, and no suffering in Zermatt. Everyone helped everyone. One for all, all for one.
This motto is engraved in the ceiling of our parliamentary building, and it is possibly the best way to describe the active reserve system in one sentence.
4. Challenges
The core challenge of a flourishing active reserve system is to keep the entire population engaged. Active reserve means that citizens perform public duties for no or very little pay for the sake of the nation and society, besides their everyday jobs. And if you want to choose the best person for each job, you need the resources reservoir of the entire population.
Of course, this runs contrary to the individualistic tendencies of our society. Asking what the country can do for you is much more en-vogue than asking what you can do for the country.
So, how do we get back on track with engaging the entire population in our active reserve system? By not just focusing on the benefits of the active reserve system for society, but by emphasizing its benefits for the individuals.
Personal Benefits for Your Business
People don’t just bring their professional experience to the table in active reserve service, they also benefit from their active reserve efforts on a professional side.
Active reserve service is ideal for sharing problem-solving experience in a new setting. As an entrepreneur and an active reserve officer in the Swiss Armed Forces, I am often asked how we handle certain problems in our company. And yes, now and then I am asked to give a demo of our product, leading straight to new leads and customers. And yes, I have hired many people I knew from the military.
Personal Benefits for Your Network
I have always been an active networker. The active reserve system was by far the best platform to build and expand my network, both nationally and internationally. For example, I had the chance to represent Switzerland in an international military exercise in Sweden or train MBA students in crisis management.
I have met many great people I would never have met without the active reserve system, that very special system that sits at the foundation of my home country.
When I was conscripted, who would have imagined that I would meet a guy with whom I would co-found Yonder 15 years later, or the godfather of my eldest child that would be born 10 years later?
About Me
Growing a company 📈 in uncertain times 🔥🧨 is like running a marathon—it demands grit, strategy, and resilience.
As a tech entrepreneur 💻, active reserve officer 🪖, and father of three 👩👦👦, I share practical insights and experience on entrepreneurship and resilience in The Resilient Entrepreneur, my weekly newsletter.
When I'm not solving problems, I recharge and find inspiration in the breathtaking mountains 🏔️ around Zermatt 🇨🇭.
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