51# - Is Musk's Acquisition of Twitter a Project Doomed to Fail?

Elon Musk's recent $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform Twitter might not seem like a typical venture for the visionary CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. It is well known that he likes intriguing and risky endeavors, but this acquisition seems to be a project he is not handling well.

A few hours ago, Twitter announced that its offices would be closed for three days as it deals with mass resignations. The wave of departures triggered Musk’s demand that employees accept a “hardcore” work environment or take three months of severance and be gone. No surprise lots took option two; some estimates say as many as three-quarters of the company’s workers could be gone now!

If we look at the acquisition through the Project Canvas lens, we can see that it misses most of the fourteen project fundamentals. Let's explore some of them in detail.

The Purpose of the project has never been clear. Musk gave several reasons for the acquisition, such as creating a super app like china's Weixin/WeChat or creating a platform for free speech. None of his explanations sounded compelling neither had a higher purpose. The fact that he wanted to pull out of the deal indicates that he was not too convinced about the project.

The Business Case is another dubious area. What is clear is that to get some return on the $44 billion, something big needs to happen. One of the most significant assumptions Musk has made based on the continuous growth of social media platforms. Still, that trend appears to be reversing, especially for Twitter. From 2010 to 2016, the number of monthly active users grew from 145 million to 310 million, but since then, it has been continuously declining: 305 million in Q2 2017; 279 million in Q3 2017, 268 million in Q4 2017; and 255 million in Q1 2018. It doesn't look like they will recover anytime soon, either. Musk said he does not expect to see a return on the investment for at least a decade. From the outside, it feels like he was gambling in a casino "all-in," and he lost, but we will see.

The Sponsor, Elon Musk himself, is dedicating enough time to the project. However, with his radical moves and extreme messages, he is not showing outstanding leadership. On the contrary, he would be better off delegating the role to someone else to make whatever changes are needed so that Musk could remain above as a visionary.

An essential Governance seems to be missing. In his first week, Musk pushed out Twitter’s top execs and eliminated its board of directors. It looks like Elon Musk is the project sponsor, project manager, and the only steering committee member. Not the best way to drive and oversee such a challenging project.

At this stage, and until we know what Musk wants to do with Twitter, we won't be able to determine the project's scope. It is clear that he wants to turn around the organization, but it is not clear where and how.

Seen Musk's bold and quick decisions, such as firing half of the employees and giving the rest an ultimatum, the project has an incredible sense of urgency, but why the rush is unclear. No timeline has been defined or made publicly available.

?In terms of resources, there doesn't seem to be a team. A fully committed team should handle a project with such high stakes. In the current situation of chaos and disgruntling, it will be extremely hard to find Twitter employees that want to work on the project.

Like I always say, the most committed people in a project are volunteers; I doubt anyone working at Twitter will want to volunteer to join Musk's acquisition project.

Change management is about generating buy-in, support, and passion for a project, yet, in just a couple of weeks, Musk has managed to do the opposite. To the point that Musk has publicly clashed with a growing number of Twitter employees about the state of the platform and fired at least one of them in a tweet. According to CNN , Musk recently got into a dispute with a software engineer on Twitter that ended with the billionaire tweeting, “he’s fired,” and Frohnhoefer confirming he’d lost access to Twitter’s internal systems. The public termination came after Frohnhoefer tweeted evidence suggesting that Musk was “wrong” about his claims that Twitter was running, in the billionaire’s words, “super slow” in various countries.

All these public disputes have created a toxic work environment in which it will be hard to build the new Twitter Musk has in mind that no one knows yet what it will look like.

Conclusion

Looking at the Twitter acquisition through the Project Canvas shows that all the project fundamentals have been ignored.?Clearly a very bumpy ride ahead and a high risk of failure. Musk has just a few weeks to pivot and turn around the project; if he doesn't, it will be a sign that the acquisition was a very costly mistake indeed.

Let's keep watching and hope he applies some modern project management techniques.

Project Canvas Practitioner Launch Party

Next Wednesday, November 23rd, you are invited to our launch event, where we will learn how companies like?KLM Royal Dutch Airlines?are implementing the Project Canvas. Please join us by registering for free here.

And here is the link to the LinkedIn Learning course on the Project Canvas.

Thanks for reading, and do share your views and suggestions!

Hasta la vista!

Antonio