Walter Isaacson: evaluation

Transcript context

…I think all of us have demons, even those of us who grew up in a magical part of New Orleans with sweet parents. We all have demons, and rule one in life is harness your demons. Know that you’re ambitious or not ambitious or you’re lazy or whatever. Leonardo da Vinci knew he was a procrastinator. I think it’s useful to know what’s eating at you, know how to harness it. Also, know what you’re good at. I’ll take Musk as another example. I’m a little bit more like Kimbal Musk than Elon. I maybe got overendowed with the empathy gene. What does that mean? Well, it means that I was okay when I ran Time Magazine. It was a group about 150 people on the editorial floors, and I knew them all and we had a jolly time. When I went to CNN, I was not very good at being a manager or an executive of an organization. I cared a little bit too much that people didn’t get annoyed at me or mad at me. Elon said that about John McNeil, for example, who was president of Tesla. It’s in the book. I talked to John McNeil a long time, and he says, “Elon just would fire people, be really rough on people. He didn’t have the empathy for the people in front of him.” Elon says, “Yeah, that’s right, and John McNeil couldn’t fire people. He cared more about pleasing the people in front of him than pleasing the entire enterprise or getting things done.” Being overendowed with a desire to please people can make you less tough of a manager, and that doesn’t mean there aren’t great people who are overendowed. Ben Franklin, overendowed with the desire to please people. The worst criticism of him from John Adams and others was that he was insinuating, which meant he was always trying to get people to like him, but that turned out to be a good thing. When they can’t figure out the big state/little state issue at the Constitutional Convention, when they can’t figure out the Treaty of Paris, whatever it is, he brings people together, and that is his superpower. To get back to the lessons, you asked, and the first was harness your demons, the second is to know your strengths and your superpower. My superpower is definitely not being a tough manager. After running CNN for a while, I said, “Okay, I think I’ve proven I don’t really enjoy this or know how to do this well. Do I have other talents? Yeah, I think I have the talent to observe people really closely, to write about it in a straight but I hope interesting narrative style.” That’s a power. It’s totally different from running an organization. think I have the talent to observe people really closely, to write about it in a straight but I hope interesting narrative style.” That’s a power. It’s totally different from running an organization. It took me until three years of running CNN that I realized I’m not cut to be an executive in really high-intense situations. Elon Musk is cut to be an executive in highly intense situations, so much so that when things get less intense … when they actually are making enough cars and rockets are going up and landing … he thinks of something else, so he can surge and have more intensity. He’s addicted to intensity, and that’s his superpower, which is a lot greater than the superpower of being a good observer. I think also, to build on that, it’s not just addiction to risk and drama. There’s always a big mission above it. I would say it’s an empathy towards people in the big picture, humanity.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.