Friday marked the seventh anniversary of Steve Jobs’s death, which has me thinking not only about his remarkable life, but also about the man most often compared to him in terms of charisma, audacity and vision. That, of course, would be Elon Musk.
When Jobs was pushed out of Apple Inc. by then-chief executive John Sculley and the board, he was a brilliant brat, someone who led through insult as much as inspiration. Despite co-founding the company, building first the Apple II and then the Mac, he had become such a disruptive force that he had to go.
When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, after 12 years in the wilderness, he was 42 years old. He returned as a grown-up; someone, yes, who could still be caustic, but who had learned how lead, primarily from watching Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar Inc., which Jobs had purchased in 1986. As Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli have pointed out in their 2015 biography, Becoming Steve Jobs, he managed the company with a maturity that had been entirely lacking during his earlier stint at Apple. He molded his top executives — Tim Cook, Jonathan Ive, Eddy Cue and others — into a cohesive team that could dream up great products and execute them brilliantly.
Musk is five years older than Jobs was when he returned to Apple. He has done some truly remarkable things — more remarkable than Jobs, when you think about it. He built one company that not only sends rockets into space, but also lands the first stage of the rocket on what amounts to a giant trampoline. It is an astonishing feat, something that NASA could never do, and, because it allows the first stage to be reused, saves most of the cost of building a new rocket.
Musk has also, of course, created Tesla, the world’s first serious effort to build an all-electric car. And he has succeeded. A few months ago, the Wall Street Journal’s car reviewer, Dan Neil, described the latest Tesla Model 3 as “magnificent” and “the next step in the history of autos.”
He noted, though, that Wall Street bears were swarming all over Tesla’s stock, not because of the quality of the car but because of the quality of the chief executive. “I think we can all agree,” he wrote, “many brilliant people can be putzes.” I would put it somewhat different. Steve Jobs grew up. Elon Musk never has.
A grown-up CEO doesn’t go on a crusade against short-sellers; he or she “beats” the shorts by increasing revenue and earnings, and by satisfying the marketplace — by performing — not by calling for short-selling to be outlawed, an absurd idea that Musk has voiced.
A grown-up CEO is able to hold onto key executives instead of watching them race for the exits. According to Business Insider, 15 top executives have left this year alone, in such key roles as director of manufacturing engineering, head of human relations, chief accounting officer, and head of global supply management.
A grown-up CEO doesn’t overpromise and underdeliver, which has been Musk’s trademark ever since he took Tesla public in 2010.
A grown-up CEO doesn’t sleep on the factory floor; he or she hires skilled factory managers who can solve problems that crop up and keep the assembly line running.