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Harvard Expert Critiques Elon Musk's Twitter Rebrand: "Out of His Element"

20 July 2024

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Zaker Adham

Summary

Harvard leadership expert Bill George has weighed in on Elon Musk's recent rebranding of Twitter, suggesting that Musk is "totally out of his element" with this decision. According to George, an executive fellow at Harvard Business School and former CEO, Musk's takeover of Twitter serves as a textbook example of poor organizational leadership.

"If you needed a case study on a poorly executed corporate takeover, Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter would fit perfectly," George said, "I don’t think he understands social media."

Musk announced the rebranding to "X" on Sunday, abandoning the well-established Twitter name and logo. Since acquiring the platform for $44 billion last year, Musk has made several controversial changes: he dismissed former CEO Parag Agrawal along with key executives, reduced the workforce significantly, reinstated banned accounts, introduced a $7.99 monthly charge for verification, and limited the number of posts users can view daily.

George, who has extensively studied leadership successes and failures, criticizes these modifications as significant errors. He points to the massive decline in advertising revenue and the company's negative cash flow, exacerbated by heavy debt and a 50% drop in advertising, as indicators of the takeover's failure.

While neither Musk nor representatives from X responded to Make It’s request for comment, the criticism is notable given Musk's history of business success with Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla, valued at $815.24 billion, and SpaceX, valued near $140 billion, are significant achievements under Musk’s leadership.

“Elon is a brilliant, brilliant guy,” said Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting in May. “He dreams about things, and his dreams have got a foundation.”

George concurs with this sentiment regarding Musk’s engineering and manufacturing ventures but notes that social media requires a different skill set, particularly strong interpersonal skills. George also referenced comments from Musk’s own brother, who has highlighted Musk’s interpersonal shortcomings.

Musk's decision to relax content moderation on the platform resulted in an influx of offensive content, including racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, which alienated many users. Furthermore, Musk's vision for transforming X into an "everything app" lacks clarity and could drive users away if they perceive the platform’s future as uncertain.

George's advice for Musk is to step back from the day-to-day operations of the rebranded company and allow CEO Linda Yaccarino to restore confidence among users and advertisers. “Now that he has the [new] CEO, he needs to let her restore what Twitter was, so [users and] advertisers come back,” George emphasized.