Elon Musk and TWITTER: A Masterclass in Moving Fast and Breaking Things…

Most media coverage of Elon Musk’s Twitter describes a disaster movie: half the workforce sacked and the rest told they can only stay if they pledge to work much harder and return to the office — prompting a further exodus, with some employees posting videos of themselves clearing their desks. The verification system has come under fire, the content moderation is a fiasco, etc., etc. In short, the company is dying on its feet.

Is Elon Musk destroying Twitter? The answer is yes, without a doubt. He is fast-tracking the destruction of all recognizable elements of the company: its management, its corporate culture, its best-known employees, its management systems… everything. It’s the management equivalent of a neutron bomb.

Instead, the question few pundits are asking is why Elon Musk, who is not only very rich, but also loves Twitter and has used it to his advantage over the years, would, after paying way over the odds to buy, then burn it to the ground.

And while some people might think that heaping $44 billion into a pile and setting it on fire is a fun thing to do, I’m pretty sure Elon Musk doesn’t. In which case, perhaps he’s an idiot who has bitten off more than he can chew, but won’t admit it. Then again, he is arguably one of the best managers of all time, capable of changing the course of sectors such as space exploration or the automotive industry, and of facing risks and challenges that very few people have been able to overcome before.

So what is happening on Twitter? Yes, it is being torn down: Musk has acquired it, and he is willing to leave no stone unturned to get his way. But for one fundamental reason: he has so little use for what was there that he prefers to simply get rid of everything he considers bad, lackluster or dead weight, and start from scratch. This kind of “creative destruction” aims to get rid of unproductive or uncooperative employees, of managers who had failed to eliminate millions of fake accounts, control content or change systems that did not work, and of users who, moreover, abused the company at every opportunity they were given by creating fake profiles, violating the most basic rules of interaction, etc.

Musk knows Twitter, and wants to transform it, beyond recognition. To do that, he must first take it off the market, which would never allow such radical changes or loss of users, even fake ones. Secondly, he must get rid of so many of its employees, and of a culture that, in Musk’s eyes, does not work and could not work, to the point of changing everything, even the decoration. Thirdly, he’s only going to keep those employees who are excited about a radical change to the point of dedicating more hours to it than they have ever done. People can be replaced. Fourthly, he’s shedding users who don’t like the way he does things, who don’t like where they think the government is headed, and who are not willing to pay to use Twitter. And finally, he’s going to take out the trash by removing fake, inactive or annoying accounts, and start again with different rules, features and operations. Musk’s Twitter. For better or worse.

Yes, Musk is destroying the company he bought. And he is doing it on purpose and consciously, carefully. When he finishes his demolition job, he will begin his project, which for now consists only of getting rid of a corporate culture that was no use to him. His Twitter will initially be much smaller than its previous iteration (and even more so considering how inflated its numbers were), and which will have a few completely different characteristics, culture, features and leadership. But for now, we can only sit on the sidewalk, in front of 1355 Market Square, and applaud the spectacle of watching the entire building burn to the ground.

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This post was previously published on Enrique Dans’ blog.

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