So, if Twitter wants to find a new CEO, what sort of person should the troubled social media platform be looking for? As a student of leadership, I can see three key requirements for anyone considering—or being considered for—this role right now:

1. Confidence and independence

A new Twitter CEO will want assurances that they will be free to take decisions about the direction of the business without being second-guessed by Musk as the majority owner. So the new CEO will need to be confident, perhaps even arrogant, and ready to stand their ground.

2. The ability to face facts

The new leader will have to "confront the brutal facts" of the situation—according to management expert Jim Collins, this is how to begin productive change. Twitter is struggling financially.

Musk paid US$44 billion to buy it, perhaps twice what it was worth. He has borrowed huge sums and sold large tranches of Tesla stock to help fund the acquisition. But he could now face interest payments to lenders of up to US$1 billion a year unless Twitter's financial health can be turned around. These are the brutal facts a new leader must confront.

3. An imaginative approach to management

The social media platform's current position leads on to a third requirement for the new leader: imagination. Twitter is a resounding practical success. It is influential and powerful. It has certainly sped up the flow of information (admittedly, inaccurate information as well as the useful kind).

And it can be a force for good—for example providing data and advice during the COVID-19 pandemic or helping to highlight the failings of politicians or the media—even with the unpleasantness and abuse that seem to be an unavoidable part of tweeting.

But is it really a commercial proposition? It is not a platform like Facebook or Instagram that can deliver billions of users to potential advertisers. Indeed, many prominent advertisers left the site apparently in response to Musk's chaotic decision making.

Perhaps the imaginative leap the new CEO has to make will be to turn Twitter into a viable not-for-profit organization, one that has enormous utility and value, if not the ability to easily make money for its owners and for advertisers. In this case, a core task for the new CEO will be to recognize what sort of business Twitter is, and decide whether it is really a conventional for-profit business at all.

Sticking with the plan

And this leads us to a major task for any future Twitter CEO—and perhaps the heart of the problem with Twitter. Musk changes his mind frequently—sometimes within hours, as we saw recently when he appeared to walk back a policy change regarding users' ability to link to other social media accounts. He may rethink stepping down, or even appoint someone only to sack them.

This brings us to a very valuable leadership lesson that the maverick Musk has taught everyone in recent months: we should hesitate before labeling forceful people as great leaders in any setting until we have seen what their long-term impact has been.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.