The Curious Case of Elon

Musk is a disruptor who produces results. His career is marked by fealty to something Yoda told Luke Skywalker: “Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.'”

It comes as no surprise to anyone with a functioning brain cell that there is a the wide gap between the real world and the Utopian construction progressives favor.

I guess that I have been rooted in the “hard” sciences like engineering and mathematics for far too long to have an appreciation of living in a world where actions and results don’t matter but feelings and intentions do. 

I have also been exposed to the softer side of organizational dynamics because in my career, I have had to learn to be multilingual in business – I have a degree in finance and economics which allows me to speak sales, marketing and accountant, mechanical engineering which allows me to speak tech, and a general business education which allows me to speak the project management and administrative lingo. My postgraduate degree allows me to understand international business interrelationships and cultures – but just like the “hard” sciences, these have rules as well.

Granted, I have been trained and worked in the operational end of several manufacturing businesses in my 40 some odd years in the workplace and in every case, results have mattered – sometimes to the very survival of the company. So maybe I’m just too sensitive to the execution of plans to comprehend the idea that our purpose is simply to “be” and be taken care of by a benevolent government and the purpose requires no “doing”, that having an idea is as good as putting one to work.

I do believe that ideas matter…but simply having an idea is not enough. An unrealized idea, something that yields no result, is worthless. It is the same in business as it is in politics. About a decade ago, I ran across an interesting article in BusinessWeek about innovation, it states that:

“Creativity, by itself, is not enough. As I’ve previously written in this space, inventions that aren’t commercialized—no matter how creative—remain inventions, not innovations. To be commercial, an invention needs to matter enough to a customer to be worth paying for. And what matters to most customers is not the invention itself but what job it enables them to do that they couldn’t do, or do well enough, before. The microwave, for example, when it was first introduced, was a terrible oven, but it was fantastic defroster—and to many customers it was worth quite a lot to be able to keep food safe in the freezer until moments before they cooked dinner rather than have to think about it the morning or the night before.”

As Master Yoda said to Luke:

“Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.'”

So, results matter.

Considering the recent events concerning Elon Musk and his process of acquiring Twitter, it seems clear to me that Musk is the physical representation of the BusinessWeek article.

I don’t know what the political leanings of Elon Musk are – I’ve always considered him to be a curious mix of socialist and capitalist, leaning on government subsidies for both Tesla and SolarCity while taking that leverage and turning it into an almost unfathomable fortune through the creation of value. The things he produces do something new, something better or faster than previously thought possible.

Like him or not, in every case, he has produced results. PayPal, SolarCity, Tesla, The Boring Company, SpaceX, all produced something tangible and useful (some better than others).

Musk is clearly a disruptive force in any market he sees an opportunity to enter. He is certainly not shy about tossing his ideas out there, putting the work into making them real and seeing where the chips fall.

In short, he keeps his mind in the clouds (or at least in orbital space) but his feet solidly on the ground.

Musk is showing that results matter.

With Twitter, it may be that Musk saw it as many of us do, a place where unreality rules, an alternate reality where the craziest of ideas are treated as if they could exist outside that platform. Maybe he saw that as an anathema, a roadblock to human progress. Maybe he saw it as a one-sided discussion forum with the primary goal of shutting down real challenge – destroying any chance of productive results emerging from it.

Musk appears to be quite comfortable with having his ideas and efforts challenged by leagues of Doubting Thomases, his response has always been, “I don’t care, I’m doing it”, something that isn’t possible on Twitter.

I don’t know. Being motivated by principle these days is rare enough that we should recognize it when it happens. That has to be it in the Musk/Twitter situation because he could have bought Congress for a fraction of what he spent on Twitter. A couple of billion goes a long way in Washington.

But Musk knows what Yoda said is true.

In the real world it is do or do not. There is no try.