Elon Elon Elon… Revenge Tactic?
A point of view.
Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has certainly been a tumultuous time in the industry. It has hit the news for many reasons and, depending on your views, most of these reasons have been significantly divisive and very impactful on not only Twitter as an organisation, but also the Twitterverse and other organisations in that space.
Elon’s agenda is being widely discussed and several theories are arising. I can’t help but theorise on the ingrained nature of personal agenda politics sometimes seen in entrepreneurship and wonder if Elon is unabashedly dismantling a technology superpower for personal reasons. Let’s look at what’s happening.
Culture Shift
An email hit all of Twitter’s surviving employed community that displayed a clear and stark warning of the future ahead. Twitter will no longer tolerate anything other than peak performance. That is that Elon himself will not tolerate anything other than peak performance.
Every company strives to get the best out of their ‘workforce’ (I truly despise this term) and sensible empathy-led organisations know that this requires a complex, diverse, and balanced ecosystem where individuals, as well as communities, can thrive. A cornerstone of this includes establishing a model of high performance that invests back into the community as well as growing as a whole and recognise that peak performance is a temporary phenomenon of highly invested people on a push for a point of achievement. We all know I can talk to this top for hours on end and the dangers of trying to sustain that level of effort… In short: Attempting to sustain peak performance for long periods of time will burn out people, communities, and organisations.
This culture shift will decimate Twitter’s organisational culture and will become a revolving door for anyone in the organisation that is not applying a personal agenda for their own significant gain. When attrition rates soar — watch Elon blame lazy people. Cookie-cutter culture will always foster a blame culture which will in turn always foster (sometimes irreparable) organisational damage.
I think Twitter will end up becoming a case study of what not to do… Worryingly, it may join a ‘Musk Bloc’ of organisations he controls where the culture has been truly damaging for individuals within it — particularly the case where Tesla had to pay $127m in damages because an employee had to endure a culture of racism and abuse and HR said it was ok because the racial slurs had been said ‘in a friendly manner’… Because that makes it all ok, then!!! SMH.
Things Over Purpose
I usually call this output over outcome and talk about the need to switch these two around. Elon’s email went even further to talk about being a ‘software and servers’ organisation and devaluing the product and design element. The email doesn’t mention the overall purpose and leads with a definite what over why message.
Organisations that don’t invest in why they exist will often miss crucial organisation benchmarks of success. As we have already seen with Twitter, both employees and users are leaving in droves for other platforms that align with a reason for being.
Twitter is having an existential crisis. I liken this to a person who is struggling with a mid-life crisis, things become important as they are emblems of success that the person feels they so lack. A fast car represents youth, affluence, and personal success to that individual but actually, it’s just a car. The locus of validation has moved from self and feelings to objects. I invite you to think of a time when that has ever worked well…
Revenge?
Elon is not alone in this shift back from people and culture-first environments. It’s a worrying trend where haste over progress with old-school values are popping up again, but let’s look at why I wonder if Elon is exacting a little bit of revenge on Twitter amongst his primary goal of personal gain.
Twitter doesn’t have a clean record, let’s make that perfectly clear. It has had complaints about allowing hate speech (particularly against women) for some time as well as other troubling aspects of segregated far right views. As Twitter learned to become a better platform that is safe for all (i.e not letting hate views spread unchecked), it made some difficult decisions such as banning Donald Trump. Elon has been a prolific user but also critic of Twitter where the right to free speech has been bandied about like sweets to try and vindicate hateful and/or untrue statements that damage people and communities to be allowed. He wants to be able to call a rescuer a paedo, let people use racial slurs in a ‘friendly manner’ and spread his well-documented form of narcissism widely without hindrance regardless of any other human being’s safety. Twitter didn’t let people do that… I wonder if Elon is relishing just slightly that this platform will be in turmoil and ultimately destroyed either reputationally, organisationally or both just to say ‘eff you for trying to shut me up, watch me destroy you and take all your data for my own personal success’… Let’s not forget — he was forced to complete the purchase after previously pulling out… I can’t help but wonder if there is some malice.
I do however know that Twitter, overnight, became a quagmire of potentially catastrophic and backward thinking that has the potential to impact many people in a horrific way.
Let’s hope this ends up being a lesson to all those personal agenda entrepreneurs who think values and community can be dealt with on the back of a cigarette packet without any investment with those who don’t adhere to them being rendered completely disposable, see some ah-ha moments from this.
