Issue 169, Part Time CEO Newsletter

Hey, it's Dhiren 👋,

These past two weeks have been two of the strangest of my life.
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Living in Dubai, watching the sky, hearing sirens. Every missile alert on my phone makes my heart stop. There's a moment of panic, then a long exhale.

But between those two moments, I kept noticing something I couldn't shake.

This city aligned. People who had never spoken, different nationalities, religions, politics, suddenly in the same WhatsApp groups, checking on each other, moving as one. Strangers became community overnight. No culture deck created that. No team-building exercise. No leadership offsite.

One shared enemy did what years of coexistence couldn't.
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🧠 The Enemy Your Team Doesn't Know About

In 1954, psychologist Muzafer Sherif demonstrated this with a famous experiment. Two groups in conflict were given a shared threat they could only solve together. Hostility collapsed almost immediately. Sherif called these Superordinate Goals, a threat so urgent it overrides every internal division.
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Governments have known this for centuries but businesses rarely use it.

When I built Cloudscape, the enemy was clear to me. Retail brands making gut-feel decisions about inventory and cash flow because they had no real visibility into their own numbers. Paying for it silently every month.

But as a business grows, something subtle happens. You hire people, build processes, create roles and KPIs. And somewhere along the way, the enemy quietly disappears. Your team stops fighting something and starts completing tasks instead. They optimize for looking busy. They wait to be told. They execute the job description and nothing more.

The founder ends up carrying the mission alone, wondering why they're exhausted.

I felt this. And the moment I named the enemy out loud to my team, something changed. They stopped working for a salary and started working for a reason.
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🧠 What Changes When You Name It

Every founder I coach carries the same exhaustion. Different business, different industry, different team. Same enemy underneath.

Hustle culture.
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The lie that a founder's value is measured by exhaustion, how much you carry, how little you sleep, how completely your business consumes you. I see what it does to people. Their health, their relationships, their ability to think clearly.

The moment I name it in the room, that's the enemy we're here to fight, something shifts.

Founders stop feeling ashamed of wanting out. They stop treating rest as weakness. They stop apologising for wanting a business that runs without them. Because now it's not laziness.

It's the mission.

That's what a named enemy does. It doesn't only align a team. It gives people permission to want what they actually want.

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Your Turn

Most founders never name their enemy because naming it requires commitment. You have to say: this problem causes harm and we exist to stop it. Every hire, every decision, every client, measured against that one sentence.

Vagueness feels safer. It isn't. Vagueness is confusion with better PR. And your team feels it, they just don't have language for what's missing.

Watching this city align this week reminded me of something simple. People don't need motivation. They need something worth fighting.

One piece of work this week. Write this sentence:

"The enemy our clients face is ______."

Then say it at your next team meeting.

🧭 Know a founder who needs to hear this?
Forward this. It could be the push they need.
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📢 Dhiren’s Updates

The Council opens again in April. Six founder spots.

I'll be honest about the timing. What's happening in this region right now is heavy. And one thing I know for certain is that carrying the weight of a business alone, on top of everything else, is a lot to ask of yourself.

A room of people who get it makes a difference. Not because they have answers. Because they've felt the same thing.

If you've been thinking about joining, my inbox is open.

📌 Dhiren’s Pick of the Week

My friend and fellow coach Samir recommended this one and I've been hooked ever since.

Case 63 on Spotify. A time-bending podcast series that has absolutely nothing to do with business. No frameworks, no productivity hacks, no lessons to extract.

Just a genuinely brilliant story that pulls you in and doesn't let go.

Sometimes the best thing you can do for your brain is give it somewhere else to be.

These past two weeks, this was mine.

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ps: did someone forward this to you?​
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Cheers,