My Take

First, for full disclosure, I am a Democrat. I voted for Kamala Harris, and I’m trying to navigate Donald Trump's journey as president for the next 3.75 years. So, I’m not a big fan of how Trump is leveraging Musk in his administration, particularly as Musk brings his corporate strategies and hubris over to government.

But that’s recent history. My firmly held beliefs around Mr. Musk have existed long before that.

I couldn’t agree more with Adam about the notion of idiosyncrasy credit we generally give to folks like Mr. Musk. He also mentioned Steve Jobs, who was another

Now comes the inevitable question: How then do you explain Mr. Musk’s success? With Tesla and SpaceX, he’s built two wildly prosperous companies, disrupting one industry and supercharging another. But those results have come in spite of the way he treats people, not because of it.
Why is it so easy to miss that point? The answer gets at a bigger truth about the way human beings think. Psychologists call it idiosyncrasy credit: As people accumulate status, we grant them more permission to deviate from social norms. So, when we see leaders being uncivil, we often get cause and effect backward. We assume that being unkind makes them successful. In truth, however, success can give them a license to be unkind. Engineers at Tesla and SpaceX tolerate abuse from Mr. Hyde because they admire the vision of Dr. Jekyll.

But I’m going to categorize Mr. Musk as a Brilliant Asshole. I would argue that he couldn’t make it in a world where he had to work within a team structure. He could only survive as a founder or CEO of a company where no one would challenge his behavior.

But I’m challenging not only his behavior but also everyone who uses him as a role model and mimics it or highlights it as something to aspire to. It’s not.

The world has enough of those folks. Don’t grant him the credit to be a (albeit brilliant) asshole.

#weshouldbebetterhumansthanthis

Agile Moose