The Right Leader, Right Now Elon Musk is emblematic of a leadership style that needs multiple foci at the same time. And if eventually, Elon completes the purchase of Twitter (at present, it’s totally up in the air), he would likely succeed in revamping Twitter, or rather, he would not fail for lack of focus. For what he has set about - an act of re-creation, whether at Twitter or the electrification of cars or putting humans on Mars – he’s hard-wired to succeed. In our book Right Leader Right Time, we dive into four distinct leadership styles: Fixer, Artist, Builder, Strategist (FABS for short). Match the right leader with the right role in the right organisation, and that’s where the magic happens. Every great leader has a dominant leadership style and for Elon, he is this age’s premier Artist Leader and preeminent innovator. The Artist is best described as compelled. Driven to create, they view the world as their canvas or a block of clay to be moulded. And if someone’s already moulded the clay, or drawn on the canvas? No problem. They paint over it. The Artist on your team is likely the renegade – the outsider. It’s easy to look back on an innovative product, design, client pitch, messaging strategy, or technology and think it was obvious. But when the Artist leader is throwing whacky ideas against the wall, they may not be popular, and yet it’s the acts of audacity from the Artist leader that lead to huge progress and exponential leaps. Elon has a reputation of not playing by the rules, and his proposed/onhold takeover of Twitter is not earning universal praise. #LeavingTwitter is now trending and Tesla stock dropped by 20% since the announcement. If you think that fazes Elon, you haven’t paid attention to the guy whose thinking extends to saying he wants to die on Mars, just not on impact. Even large companies are ripe for disruption though, and with many players in the social media landscape competing for your attention, fresh thinking is needed for Twitter — at 217 million users, a fraction of Facebook’s or Instagram’s billions — to survive and thrive into the future. An Artist leader is needed. The Need for Multiple Canvases Critics wonder how Elon could effectively lead what seems like an endless list of companies and initiatives. Isn’t this lack of focus and attention a recipe for failure? Not for an Artist. Musk has, gee, how many things going on…Boring Company. SpaceX. Tesla. Mind control. And tweeting nonstop. For the Artist leader, an ability to paint on multiple canvases in parallel is essential. It’s at the heart of the creative spark and inspiration kick that this type of leader is known for. Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and 25 other masterpieces while inventing the tank, the parachute, and advancing fields as diverse as anatomy, astronomy, cartography, paleontology and hydrology. So in the tech world it’s not surprising that the mastermind behind Twitter, Jack Dorsey, led Square and Twitter at the same time. Steve Jobs had Apple — and Pixar. Silicon Valley legend TJ Rodgers grew Cypress Semiconductor, while championing solar cells at SunPower. Compare this seemingly divided attention to other leadership styles where distraction would be madness. The Fixer leader, for example, is wired to turn around an organisation or situation in complete chaos or dysfunction. When losses are mounting, employee morale is in the toilet, or some other crisis looms, laser focus is needed on the end goal. Distraction would be deadly. The Builder leader is wired for market share and taking an organisation, product or service to a dominant position. All efforts are directed at processes, systems and people to accomplish a singular goal. Fixers and Builders are simply too linear to satisfy the Artist’s energies. Fixer or Builder wiring simply is not designed for the kind of distraction Elon lives for. Conversely, attempt to box in the Artist leader into just one thing? It’s impossible — and a recipe for failure. If Elon both owned Twitter and it could remain a public company, investors might be wondering if they should bet against him, saying he’s just too distracted. Seeing Elon’s wiring as Artist leader, that would be a bad bet in the short term. His compulsion moves him to do exactly what he is doing. As the Zen saying goes, how you do anything is how you do everything. Your Highest and Best Use In our work matching organisations with our RED Team of top CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, and other C-Suite executives at InterimExecs, we have seen outsized success from leaders who focus on what is for their highest and best use and reject everything else. Easy to say, hard to do. The vast majority of executives who have approached us have not been a fit for our team. The pattern is clear: they dilute their efforts and take too many leadership role detours in the course of their careers. Too many leaders attempt to be all things to all people, saying yes to any situation, even those in which they are not best applied. THE DISRUPTORS
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