swtyndall.notwhatwethink · @notwhatwethink
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The 'Myth Of Elon Musk' Was His Most Valuable Asset. The Twitter Debacle Means It's Over
Once it's gone, no amount of showmanship can will it back.
For Elon Musk, the idea that he is a once-in-a-generation super genius is central to the success of everything he does. It's one of the most important narratives in business--that he is capable of rallying companies to do what seems to be impossible for everyone else.
That myth has taken Musk far in life, including making him the most wealthy man in the world. It's tempting to think that it must be at least partially true.
If you a Tesla shareholder, for example, you want to believe that Musk is uniquely qualified to bring into existence things like mass-scale electric vehicles (EVs), or autonomous cars that can navigate city streets more safely than human drivers. You also want to believe that when Musk promises to do things like get humans to Mars, that he has a plan and isn't just throwing things against the wall to see what doesn't blow up. You have a financial interest in the myth.
To be fair, the companies Musk leads are--by all of the ways you might measure such a thing--incredibly successful. Tesla has almost single-handedly made EVs a thing normal people will buy. SpaceX is easily the most important private space exploration company ever. It has been able to do in a decade what the full resources of the United States Space program hasn't been able to do--mostly build a rocket that you can land and use more than once.
Those successes are almost always attributed to the genius of Elon. I'm sure there's some credit due to him, but I can't help but think it's equally as possible that those companies have been wildly successful not because of Elon Musk, but in spite of him. Over the past few weeks, it has become more apparent that the genius of Musk is a myth.
If nothing else, the past month of Twitter under Musk's ownership--and, more importantly, his leadership--has broken through the myth and revealed that he doesn't always have a well-thought out plan for success. Sometimes he's just winging it and gets lucky. Sometimes he's able to impose his will by the sheer force of his personality. Other times, he pushes too far and things break.
At Tesla and SpaceX, everyone knows who is in charge. The culture is completely built around the myth. Your job, if you work for one of those companies, is to figure out how to turn the myth (or the promises, no matter how detached from reality) into truth. That's it. That's what you do. Musk makes a bold claim and you work "extremely hardcore" until it's accomplished.
None of that is true at Twitter. What is true is that the company is a mess and Musk has no real plan to fix it beyond imposing his personality and hope that the people still there will jump at his latest whim.
If the core tenant of the myth is that Musk has a vision for the future and has figured out the path to get there, the one thing clear at Twitter is that Musk has no vision beyond "let's see how far I can bend this new toy before it breaks." If he does have some kind of mysterious unknown vision, he hasn't made the path known to anyone either.
The aurora of success is intoxicating. It attracts talent and investors--and even customers--things it is very hard to build a business without. Success makes people look the other way when parts of the myth start to show cracks.
On the other hand, once the myth is gone, it's gone. You can't will it back into existence. No amount of showmanship can make people believe your narrative once it's been shown to be a lie.
That's a problem for Musk at Twitter, but it's an even bigger problem at his other companies. All of those big promises start to look empty once the myth is revealed. Promises of self-driving cars and AI-powered robots just look like hype, which is a problem when you depend on the confidence of your investors.