On leadership: Elon, why?!
I greatly admired Elon Musk: for his bold extraordinary vision, his unbounded courage to take up insanely complex challenges, and his awesome ability to inspire people through Jobs-like “reality distortion field”.
In his recent Leonardo Da Vinci biography, Walter Isaacson said that “vision without execution is hallucination”. Elon didn’t just dream big. He delivered big too.
From scratch, the team led by Elon created and commercialised an electric car that catalysed the rest of the global automotive industry in that direction. From scratch, his team achieved in a commercial rocket space more and faster than the NASA’s and Russia’s space programmes put together during the same period.
Elon is no saint, and he is not the only high profile person in the USA who cares more about what he thinks about the world than what the world thinks of him… Yet, there are always red lines which shouldn’t be crossed, no matter what.
A public figure who knows well that his tweets and actions can, inter alia, move the needle big way should wave his lightsabre (or a joint) with caution or — at times — not at all. Yet, it happens again, and again, and again… Why?!
Power happiness? Loneliness? Disillusionment? Changing character trait? Pressure? Childish mischief?
There are two people whom I consider, to a degree, as my role models: Steve Jobs and Da Vinci. Steve’s dark side was less pleasant than what we lately see from Elon as it was often obnoxious and targeted at a particular person. In stark contrast to that, Leonardo had a sunny personality and people around him always enjoyed his company. Was that one of the reasons he wasn’t commercially successful?
Is it hard to become a world-class achiever without being an asshole or socially ignorant narcissist? Are Da Vincis and Jack Mas always in minority?
