In an interview on All In With Chris Hayes, Kara Swisher said she thinks Musk has been unduly influenced by right-wing political figures, by which I’m guessing she means Trump. (The interview was a teaser for a full-length podcast on Musk and Twitter.)
I didn’t listen to the podcast. I probably won’t. I’m writing this today not because I care about Musk or Twitter but because I’m tired of hearing Musk described as a genius.
I know he designed a car, made a boatload of money, and now he thinks he’s qualified to run a social media platform. (Or at least he did. Perhaps the realization that he had no idea how to manage Twitter was the reason he tried to back out of the deal. I guess we’ll never know about that.)
One thing I do know is that Musk is giving the word “genius” a bad name.
According to Wikipedia, “There is no scientifically precise definition of a genius.” Generally, a genius is someone with “exceptional intellectual or creative abilities.”
But my favorite definition (also from Wikipedia) is a bit more specific:
“Walter Isaacson, biographer of many well-known geniuses, explains that although high intelligence may be a prerequisite, the most common trait that actually defines a genius may be the extraordinary ability to apply creativity and imaginative thinking to almost any situation.”
This is where Elon Musk and “genius” part ways. Musk is clearly not able to apply his talents to “almost any situation.” Plenty of people who have successfully managed other businesses could have given Musk some pointers on how to manage Twitter.
In fact, as a former Sr. Operations Analyst for a tech company, I could have told Musk a few things. For example:
For starters, you don’t make changes until you thoroughly understand how things work now. How else do you know what to change?
Next, you come up with a plan that includes suggestions from people with expertise in the area— you don’t pull it out of your a$$.
Then, you get buy-in from key people who your employees trust.
You ask those key people to act as influencers to promote the plan and bring employee feedback.
Then you use that information to assess your ability to implement the plan and address the issues of concern that your employees will undoubtedly bring up with your key people.
Armed with this new information, you make revisions to ensure the success of your plan while ensuring that your employees’ concerns have been addressed.
Finally, you leverage those same key people to assist you in implementing the revised plan.
So, how did the genius Musk handle it? He fired half his employees immediately, then told the other half they had a couple of days to either sign a pledge to work “hardcore” or he would fire them. (Note that “hardcore” is not defined — so the specificity all successful business plans require is missing.)
The only thing that is clear to me is that Musk plans to continue to abuse employees of Twitter in much the same fashion he has abused employees of Tesla.
In conclusion, if a genius needs to be capable of applying his talents to “just about any situation,” then Musk is no genius.
I rest my case.