A Managed Hunt- and Elon Musk

2 min readNov 2, 2022

“Managed Archery Hunt in Progress. Other Users Must Stay on Designated Trails”

I stopped hiking and read the sign. Who, exactly, is being hunted?

Which brings me to Elon Musk.

Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Musk fired the top execs, the entire board, and is planning to layoff thousands of additional staff. This is the perfect scenario to talk about something Musk has lost- and can’t replace.

Institutional memory.

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We’ve all seen this at work. An employee decides to leave or is let go, and no one takes the time to consider how much company knowledge is walking out the door- knowledge that cannot be regained. Sure, you may keep updated procedure manuals and carefully organized files, but there are nuances that only people in the job really know and understand. Here are some examples:

· A CFO who has built a relationship with the external auditors, and discussed the accounting treatment of dozens of complex issues.

· The General Counsel, who has made difficult calls on the amount of legal liability the company faces on lawsuits that have been in the courts for years.

· A VP of Sales, who has relationships with key people at your largest customers. In some cases, clients are placing orders solely based on the relationship with the salespeople.

These skills and relationships don’t get replaced, and the replacement will spend months trying to make up for the knowledge that was lost.

One other thing.

I’m a frequent Twitter user, but my frustration with the feed was growing before Musk’s takeover. If the New Twitter (reminds me of New Coke) has no content filters and crowds my feed with ads, I’ll probably drop the service.

A Managed Hunt- and Elon Musk

Written by Accounting Accidentally