From the FTX bankruptcy and downfall of crypto “rock star” Sam Bankman-Fried to the chaos at Twitter, it has not been a good week for the geniuses of capitalism. Elon Musk’s abrupt and in some cases already reversed decisions since taking over the social media company back up his contention that so far his tenure “isn’t boring,” but also expose the type of corporate governance issues that are too often repeated to the detriment of shareholders.”Without a doubt, Sam Bankman-Fried is a genius,” said Yale School of Management leadership guru Jeffrey Sonnenfeld in an interview with CNBC’s “Taking Stock” on Thursday. “But what’s hard is that somebody has to be able to put on the brakes on them and ask them questions. But when they develop one of these emperor-for-life models … then you really don’t have accountability,” Sonnenfeld said.Few would doubt the genius of Elon Musk, or Mark Zuckerberg, for that matter, but few would put them in the same class with many companies that have failed spectacularly, though Sonnenfeld says they share the link of being allowed to operate without enough corporate oversight.”It’s not crazy to talk about Theranos, or WeWork, Groupon, MySpace, WebMD, or Naptster – so many companies that fall off the cliff because they didn’t have proper governance, they didn’t figure out, how do you get the best of a genius?” Sonnenfeld said.In the case of Bankman-Fried, who stepped down from his CEO rol …
