Succeeding Elon Musk, the problem of the long run new boss of Twitter

Elon Musk has agreed to nominate a successor to go Twitter, whose activity is already wanting very delicate, caught between the calls for of the ebullient proprietor and the expectations of advertisers, regulators, collectors and workers.

After almost two days of procrastination, the entrepreneur has accepted the decision of the ballot he launched on Sunday on his social community. Some 57% of the 17 million collaborating customers have referred to as for his departure.

“I’ll resign as CEO as quickly as I discover somebody loopy sufficient to do that job!”, tweeted the iconoclastic 50-year-old.

Elon Musk has by no means but willingly handed over the reins of one of many many main corporations he has created or led over the previous three many years.

He was pressured out of his personal firm X.com by the board of administrators in 2000, and in the present day he’s nonetheless on the head of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Firm, along with Twitter.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at Yale College and a specialist in governance, compares him to Travis Kalanick (Uber), Adam Neumann (WeWork), and even to Steve Jobs “earlier than he bought kicked within the butt” and was fired from Apple in 1985.

Leaders, in keeping with him, turned “closed in on themselves”, unable to “hear”, “pushing away what may assist them”.

For Ann Lipton, professor of enterprise legislation and entrepreneurship at Tulane College, even when Elon Musk designates a successor, “he has very robust views on run Twitter”, which he’ll stay the bulk shareholder.

“So any new boss may need a tough time implementing his personal imaginative and prescient,” she says. “He’ll most likely work in Musk’s shadow, a fortiori to the extent that Musk desires to stick with the corporate.”

The Pretoria native thus indicated that even as soon as the uncommon gem is unearthed, he would nonetheless be accountable for “the groups devoted to software program and servers.”

The billionaire being a compulsive consumer of the platform, Ann Lipton imagines the likelihood that he responds to direct solicitations from customers asking him to determine sure points and thus weakens his successor.

– “A clone” –

As for the profile of the long run normal supervisor, “he wants somebody who reacts in a extra knowledgeable and diplomatic method to outdoors eyes”, believes Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. However for lecturers, the issue is that Elon Musk “is in search of a clone of himself and that is precisely what we have to keep away from.

A number of American media have talked about the names of investor Jason Calacanis and former PayPal govt David Sacks, each of whom are near Elon Musk and are additionally avid Twitterers.

They had been a part of the tight workforce that surrounded the billionaire in the course of the takeover of the platform and had been concerned in key choices, in keeping with the Los Angeles Occasions.

For Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, fairly than choosing from his interior circle, the second richest man on the planet ought to go for an skilled govt, snug within the position of a public determine and with acknowledged insights.

He mentions the previous boss of CNN, Jeff Zucker, in addition to the previous CEO of the phone operator T-Cellular, John Legere. The latter utilized in mid-November, however Elon Musk instantly dismissed this proposal.

The successor should reassure the regulators, who’re fearful a few lesser moderation of content material, advertisers, a lot of whom have distanced themselves, but in addition the collectors of the group, very indebted, in addition to his workers.

Elon Musk himself admitted Wednesday to anticipate a turnover 2023 down greater than 40% in comparison with 2021.

He assures that because of the drastic cost-cutting measures taken since late October, together with the dismissal of about half of the workforce, “Twitter will probably be wonderful, subsequent 12 months”.

“The worth of Twitter is reducing quickly,” warns Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. “It is a extremely perishable asset.”