This month I want to highlight an X post (formerly Twitter tweet) by Esther Crawford. Esther provides her insider insights on Twitter, Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase, Twitter’s transition to X, and Elon Musk’s leadership style. From my outsider’s perspective, Twitter’s purchase and nearly all subsequent decisions were haphazard, tumultuous, and ill-advised. Twitter’s business decisions come across as impetuous and driven by Elon Musk’s ego, or preconceived notions. That said, I recognize my own bias at play, and believe our society too quickly defines individuals, or entities, based on singular events. We create caricatures of each other based on a sound bite or picture, and we forget that humans are wonderfully complex and nuanced; we recognize that nuance in ourselves but don’t give others the same grace.

Esther worked at Twitter during the buyout and experienced the turmoil first hand. I found Esther’s thoughts extremely objective, and she explicitly calls out several meaningful nuances in Elon Musk’s decisions and leadership style. I am impressed with Esther’s ability to recognize the good and bad, and garner learnings from her experiences, even though the experiences were painful. This X post serves as a reminder that we are all best served recognizing the nuance in each other, leading with grace and empathy, and promoting extreme objectivity in our interactions.

https://twitter.com/esthercrawford/status/1684291048682684416

“Everyone can be seen as both a hero or a villain, depending on who is telling what angle of the story. Elon doesn’t deserve to be venerated or vilified. He’s a complicated person with an unfathomable amount of financial and geopolitical power… I disagree with many of his decisions and am surprised by his willingness to burn so much down, but with enough money and time, something new & innovative may emerge.”