From Alfred Lin’s section of Sequoia’s presentation to its portfolio companies about adapting to a harder business environment:
To prepare your team for the new reality: Start with why. Reaffirm your mission and values. Showcase your leadership. Align your team. Ask for commitment.
Reaffirm your Mission/Values: This is really important to the missionaries you’ve hired. The mercenaries are the first to decamp. When we couldn’t go public at LinkExchange, the mercenaries were the first to leave and that happened at Airbnb and DoorDash. After 9/11, when sales went to zero at Zappos, the mercenaries fled to larger companies such as Nordstroms or Amazon. This happens again and again. Make sure you keep the missionaries.
Notes:
(1) It’s the CEO’s responsibility to ensure that the company has an inspiring mission, and to convey this mission to your team. You should also build a team of smart people who are inspired by the company’s mission, will work hard, and who don’t skip from job to job.
(2) At the same time, labeling employees as “mercenaries” is simplistic and demeaning. Your employees are rational individuals who should be expected to evaluate their job and their confidence in the company’s future. It does not make them “mercenaries”.
(3) And “missionaries”? You are not building a cult. Employees should not be devoted to your mission as a supreme value. Similarly, while working at your company should be satisfying, inspiring, and supportive, it is not your employees’ “family”. There’s a difference between friends, work colleagues and family.
(4) Each employee’s emotional well-being is impacted by their belief that their company does good, by their job satisfaction, and by the people they work with. Their financial well-being is impacted by their salary, benefits and options, which are determined by the financial success of the company. Many of these factors are in your control and are therefore your responsibility. By labeling employees as “missionaries” or “mercenaries”, you downplay your own agency and avoid this responsibility.
A Founder's Notebook 
This is spot on. I wish more people understood that missionary or mercenary are two sides of the same coin. The Crusades are a totally wrong analogy to apply to what startups are trying to do in a capitalist world. I also have a theory that companies espousing asking employees to think of work as a life mission reflects back in employees bringing their “whole self” to work, and thinking of work as family. The boundaries start eroding with founders building a cult, and once boundaries are porous, they are porous in both directions.
Excellent point. While an inspiring company mission has significant impact on employees’ motivation, the expectation that employees should be “missionaries” crosses a line.