Can Elon Musk lead global management and sustainability with this attitude?

Elon Musk has had many rough years as an influential tech leader.

The Tesla CEO has been dogged by a seemingly unending list of setbacks. There were leaks showing how the company was covering up its high rates of worker injuries, a fatal accident involving its Autopilot driver-assist system, fires in the paint shop and a catastrophic failure of Musk’s plan to automate final assembly of Tesla vehicles — an intricate process which robots can’t easily perform. And that’s to say nothing of the headlines generated by Musk’s unfiltered and combative tweets, including one in which he accused a diver who aided the Thailand cave rescue of being a pedophile.

Then on Aug. 7, in an attempt to reduce the mounting pressure from both investors and critics, Musk tweeted that he was taking Tesla private at $420 per share — a significant premium on the market price — without first consulting his board or notifying shareholders. “Funding secured,” he assured his followers via his social media account. This promise, like so many others, was a lie. But unlike in the past, it would have consequences.

Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018

Musk has benefited immensely from a myth of unique brilliance that the tech press and business media, in particular, helped him build. This myth has long shielded him from true scrutiny but is unraveling as Tesla’s problems and Musk’s unhinged tweets have forced a more critical assessment of his actions. Yet as much as he tries to direct the blame at others, his narcissism makes him unable to accept the inconvenient truth that the responsibility is ultimately his own.

Let’s first take a look at why Musk’s financing tweet was such a big deal. In the days following his declaration, it became clear that he was hoping for Saudi money to fund his plan; but the Saudis put $1 billion into Lucid Motors instead. To make matters worse, Azaelia Banks, who claimed she was at Musk’s mansion in early August to record music with his musician girlfriend Grimes, alleged that Musk was franticly calling potential investors to secure funding after sending the tweet.

Since Tesla was and remains a public company, these actions were illegal, leading the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch an investigation that recently came to a close — but not without more antics on Musk’s part.

On Sept. 27, the SEC sued Musk for securities fraud for making “false and misleading” statements to investors and sought to bar him from serving as an officer or director of a public company. But it didn’t have to get to that point.

Musk had negotiated a settlement with the SEC where he would have paid $10 million and resigned as chairman for two years, but he was incensed that it would require him not to admit guilt or innocence. He wanted to declare he hadn’t done anything wrong, so he told his board he would resign unless they publicly supported him and backed his decision to reject the settlement. They promptly agreed.

However, when the stock crashed after the lawsuit was filed, Musk sent his lawyers back to the SEC to negotiate a new settlement. This time he was required to pay $20 million, along with a matching $20 million from Tesla; resign as chairman for three years; and the company would have to add two independent directors and a lawyer to review Musk’s communications — including his tweets. Talk about a great dealmaker.

But for anyone who’s been following the billionaire, this didn’t come as a surprise.

For much of the past decade, Musk has been plastered across magazine covers; praised as a visionary whose ideas were remaking the world. Yet, faced with critical assessment instead of blind praise, Musk now claims that the media has been bought off by traditional auto and fossil fuel companies looking to smear him. He even floated the idea of starting a website to rate journalists on their “credibility.”

But the media isn’t Musk’s only enemy. His Twitter account has become the site of a conspiracy parroted on supportive blogs and forums that “short sellers” — investors which make money by betting that a stock price will decline — are behind Tesla’s negative media coverage and are trying to bring the company down to make a profit. After settling with the SEC, Musk called the institution the “Shortseller Enrichment Commission,” showing the company needs to hurry up and hire his tweet monitor.

Musk has been consumed by his narcissism to a degree that any criticism, no matter how reasonable, is an attack on the very core of his being; a fact which has become ever clearer as his addiction to Twitter — and who knows what else — has gotten worse. This week Musk said Twitter had briefly locked down his account because his tweets seemed suspicious. In fact, it was just Musk being Musk.

Wanna buy some Bitcoin? pic.twitter.com/9ZbBJ5fuVq— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2018

But Bitcoin and Japanese anime are the least of Musk’s social media worries. After being called out for getting involved in the Thai cave rescue for good press, Musk lashed out at the British diver who helped lead the successful mission, branding him a “pedo” — slang for pedophile. He issued a half-hearted apology before doubling down on the accusation and asking why the diver hadn’t sued him if his claims were untrue. What Musk didn’t realize was that he was being sued — the diver’s lawyer had already sent the notice.

So what caused Musk to take to Twitter with such erratic outbursts? Banks claimed Musk was on acid when he sent the infamous tweet, and Musk himself admitted that the $420 share price was a reference to cannabis culture. In an interview with the New York Times, Musk denied that he smoked marijuana: “There’s a reason for the word ‘stoned.’ You just sit there like a stone on weed.”

Yet, in September, when Musk took a puff of a joint on Joe Rogan’s podcast, claiming he’d only tried it once, his demeanor didn’t inspire confidence. He came off twitchy and awkward and later came under fire for smoking marijuana when Tesla’s workers are drug tested and could be fired for doing the same.