I once had a lot of respect for the dude, now I wonder who the actual competent players are at tesla and spacex who have actually got things done, because it's become pretty apparent the emperor has no clothes.
I had a rough sense that this was the case, but those quotes (and sources) make it undeniably clear.
[Insert standard caveat about his wide array of harmful and toxic behavior]
Good visionary leadership: 1. creates a big picture, 2. hires competent people to execute, and 3. then gets out of the way.
Musk largely succeeds on the first two, but waffles on the third. However, he creates enough fires to distract himself from interfering with all his companies all the time, so his failure on the third point is somewhat self-limiting.
He is well known to have 3-4h long discussions with engineering teams going into extreme detail (and doing so until into the night) and making choices and taking responsibility when they fail.
If anything is true about Musk then its that he is the opposite of 'getting out of the way'.
> so his failure on the third point is somewhat self-limiting.
Or what most people who study the subject actually believe, that him 'not getting out of the way' is actually why the companies are successful.
Bezos took the get out of the way approach and BO has spend like 10+ billion with no revenue and will never be profitable, while SpaceX is a highly successful company.
For SpaceX, do not wonder, this is known:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-nasa-elon-musk-gwynne-shotwell-tw...
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/gwynne-shotwell-aiming...
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-gwynne-shotwell-to-oversee-...
No matter that Shotwell or anybody else in the leadership of SpaceX would agree with this take.
And Shotwell overseeing the Starship program is just a dumb headline. What happened is that operation in Brownsville was simply integrated into the normal SpaceX structures rather then being a somewhat parallel operation. Shotwell was very involved before and after this administrative change. Neither means that much has changed in terms of how the program is lead technically.