Disruption

Downsizing an organization to its correct size often involves a period of disruption. We’ve seen this firsthand within our own organization: from the outside, things can initially appear to be getting worse rather than better.

A recent and very public example of this is what happened at Twitter during Elon Musk’s takeover. The process was chaotic, and the initial outcomes looked messy. However, it’s important to consider the incentives and perspectives of those providing commentary.

Much of the criticism came from liberal news media, populated by journalists who had grown to rely heavily on Twitter as a primary source for stories—sometimes simply copying and pasting tweets into their articles. For them, the prospect of a business leader like Elon Musk drastically cutting headcount and changing the rules threatened the entire ecosystem they depended on. When Musk arrived at Twitter, famously bringing a sink to the office (“let that sink in”), he made it clear he intended to overhaul the company, eliminate unnecessary roles, and reshape how the organization operated.

He also understood a crucial point: for a platform with billions of users, artificial intelligence had to play an essential role in content moderation and monitoring. It was simply not feasible for a human staff—of any scale—to police conversations for a global user base. The numbers just don’t add up—AI was, and remains, essential to meet such a massive challenge.