Chicago Booth Review Podcast Is Elon Musk a Modern-Day Odysseus?

Greg Bunch: So when you're doing strategy, you yourself have to think what are my strengths? What tools are available to me? But when you're thinking about your counterpart, you have to think how do they win? What tools did they rely on in negotiation or in business building? And the more you understand which tool they default to, which skill they default to, the more it gives you an advantage.

Hal Weitzman: Leaders making high-stakes decisions needing to innovate and outthink their competitors, that could easily describe today's business landscape. But it was also the case among the ancient Achaeans besieging the city of Troy in Homer's Iliad. The ancient Greeks thought a lot about strategy, which is why strategists in business, politics and the military still draw on their wisdom today. So what business lessons can we learn from the heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey? Welcome to the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, where we bring you groundbreaking academic research in a clear and straightforward way. I'm Hal Weitzman, and today we're bringing you a fun and thought-provoking conversation that I had with Chicago Booth's Greg Bunch, who teaches new venture strategy to MBA students and executives. When he's advising entrepreneurs, when does he urge them to be more like Agamemnon who is able to bring people together for a common cause, or Odysseus known for his strategic mind and his ability to outwit opponents, or Achilles the most skilled of all the warriors? And what characteristics do today's business leaders share with the legendary leaders of Ancient Greece?

Greg Bunch: I hate war. War is a terrible thing. The military officers I've known and worked with hate war, and yet war has a lot of lessons to teach us, and especially those of us who teach strategy. One reason I turn to military strategy for insight is because so much is recorded. The generals write down their thinking, their aides-to-camp write down what they observe, journalists write, statesmen write about it, historians write about it. We have documents of strategic decisions that go back into the fourth and fifth century BC. And earlier Thucydides Peloponnesian War is a great case that we are still citing and mining today. In political science or actually political history, we're studying challenges between Athens Sparta, their allies, the Persian Empire. Whereas with business strategy, we just don't get those kinds of records. There's not much written about what goes on in the mind of the CEO when she's making a decision.

And usually by the time it's reported, it's gone through a public relations sanitization. So if you want insight about high-stakes decisions being made by people where there are existential threats, you almost have to go to military history for it. And so I have been studying military history probably through my whole life. One of the areas I've been really interested lately is the Homeric poems, both the Iliad and the Odyssey. A University of Pennsylvania Professor Emily Wilson just put out two amazing translations. Her first one was the Odyssey, came out a few years ago. It's a very readable translation of the Greek. And just this year she put out her translation of the Iliad. The reason I find this interesting is because the leaders are, again, in a high-stakes decision. It's life or death, there's a war that's been going on for a decade at Troy.

It's been in a stalemate for most of the decade. And there are good chieftains leaders. There are also some very powerful women characters, both human and goddesses who are doing a lot of thinking through this. And when you study this, you will see themes that recur in business as we make high-stakes decisions. A scholar of military history in London, he was at King's College until very recently, took a new appointment, is Sir Lawrence Friedman. And he wrote a book called Strategy. And in it he talks about three characters, Achilles, Agamemnon, and Odysseus. And Achilles is especially noted for his mastery of the spear by winning through brute force, through his skill as a warrior. Agamemnon is a good warrior, but he is famous for his ability to pull the tribes together. To keep the Greeks at Troy over a decade and a lot of alpha kind of warriors playing together, he himself is a good warrior.

He has the skills of Achilles. He's not as good as Achilles, but his strength is joint ventures and statesmanship and diplomacy. He's good at social capital, is what we would say at the University of Chicago. And then the last characters the most interesting, it's Odysseus. So Odysseus is also a very good warrior. He knows how to keep his own people together and he knows how to work with the various other tribal leaders. But he has a skill that in Greek is called Metis. This is strategic planning. It's out thinking. It sometimes means deceit. One of the epithets for him is you liar, you son of a liar, you grandson of a liar. People never totally trusted Odysseus because he would always shape truth to his own benefit. And yet they always came to him for wisdom because he could outthink anyone. He's the person who comes up with the idea of the Trojan horse.

So in these three characters, I've come to see that almost all good strategists draw on all three of them to some degree. Most of us play one of those characters more often than others. If you're really good at a functional skill, if you're great at calculating discounted cash flow, if you're great at finance, then you're going to be an Achilles. Finance is going to be your tool that you're going to use. If you have a domain expertise, you understand how to sell swimming pools at the North Pole, then you're going to rely on the Achilles thing. You're just really good at one domain or functional skill and you'll rise very high on that skill. As we've learned, functional skill will take you pretty far. But somewhere around age 32, the social science says, you really need to become better at social capital and you're judged more on social capital, but you'll continue to use your Achilles strengths.

But it's somewhere in that middle career that we really learn how to use the political skills, the joint venturing skills, and that will carry us a very long way. And then there's this third skill that probably a Jungian might even say is a shadow self because it's not only about out-thinking and out-planning, it can involve deception. It can involve the big lie, and this is the one that can be very complicated to use. It can be very easy to use ethically if you simply outthink your opponent. But it is often used where you're like the magician who everyone's looking at your right hand and you're doing something with your left hand. And there are certain players that you begin to realize they are Odysseus-like. And once you understand they're Odysseus-like, you always have to wonder what game are they really playing. So when you're doing strategy, you yourself have to think what are my strengths? What tools are available to me? But when you're thinking about your counterpart, you have to think how do they win?

What tools did they rely on in negotiation or in business building? And the more you understand which tool they default to, which skill they default to, the more it gives you an advantage.

Hal Weitzman: Is that all, did Lawrence Friedman come up with this framework to talk about your opponent or how does he use it?

Greg Bunch: So I'm not a specialist on Lawrence Friedman's scholarship. I read his book and immediately just it worked for me. He is thinking about the skills that you can draw on in strategic thinking that perdure through time. You'll see these things repeated over and over through time.

Hal Weitzman: So it is that you know yourself and then you know your opponent and that helps you. And so let's apply this to business a little bit because one of the reasons that you actually told me about this, Greg, was because I asked you about Elon Musk and what type of a leader you thought he was. And so how does that fit in? Where is Elon Musk?

Greg Bunch: Elon Musk is one of the best strategist of our lifetime. He's a complicated character. There's a lot written about him, positive and negative. I find he's somebody that every student of strategy just has to learn. He exemplifies all three of these traits. Sometimes he wins by the skills of lion-hearted Achilles, by playing a bold play, by being really good at some functional skills. Sometimes he wins by putting together a confederation of investors and other people to build businesses or invest in businesses. But I would say he may be the most Odysseus-like character that we're seeing on the international business stage today. He outplays us. He out thinks us. We can never be entirely sure. What he says is, I need to be careful how to phrase this, if he plays with truth the way I would think about playing with truth, if he's doing misdirection on purpose, he's just an absolutely fascinating character.

Who would think, let's go to Mars, let's build a solar business. Let's do boring businesses, let's do electric vehicles. Whenever you think you know what direction Elon Musk is going, pay attention, he may be going a different direction. Yeah, I think he is maybe the most Odysseus-like Character.

Hal Weitzman: And it's that audacity you talked about that makes him.

Greg Bunch: Well, the audacity might even be an Achilles trait. Achilles wasn't that smart. Achilles could be out-thought. And his weakness was people played to his vanity and his pride because he just knew he was the strongest warrior on the field. Elon Musk is a strong warrior on the field. He does have the audacity, but it's his mind. He makes moves on the board most of us would never think to make or dare to make or maybe have the... I don't know think there are other players like that. But today he kind of is the person I think of who is probably the most Odysseus-like in business.

Hal Weitzman: So he's Odysseus-like in the terms of out-thinking others, right?

Greg Bunch: Yeah. So by the way, that doesn't mean he's good for you. Odysseus, remember he out-thinks the Trojans and he says, "Look, their God is a Neptune and his symbol is the horse. So let's create this huge horse and say it's a gift to the Trojans and we're now appeasing Neptune and we're going to leave." So he creates this huge horse. He gives it as a gift to the city of Troy, and he persuades all the Greeks to now abandon the field and they sail away. But as you know, there are some top elite, we'd call them special forces, including Odysseus himself were hiding in the belly of this horse. And as they bring the horse into the city, it ends up in the absolute destruction of Troy. So Elon Musk is a fabulous Odysseus for himself and his shareholders. If you're playing the other side of the game, you need to be on your A game with him all the time.

Hal Weitzman: So if you are on the other side, how would you address an Odysseus-like rival?

Greg Bunch: Understanding that you're in a game is the first rule of any game. Understanding who you're playing is really key. Know yourself and know the other as classic Sun Tzu. So it starts by I think a lot of humility. If I think I'm smarter than him, I'm going to die, I'm going to lose. I'm going to fail. So now I know that he's smarter than me. I know he's going to help play me on the board. Now I have to think, do I just need to leave the field? So sometimes the best thing you can do against an overwhelming force is just exit the field with as many assets intact. And that's actually wisdom and strategy. Can I just get my team out of here? The next thing you do is then you have to think like Agamemnon and say, "Can I put together a joint venture?

Can I put together an alliance that can outdo him?" Because an alliance can beat Odysseus. And we see this, there comes a point actually in the Odyssey where nobody trusts Odysseus. His own people don't trust him because he just plays for himself. So I don't want to apply that to Elon Musk, but I'm saying if I'm up against a player who clearly can outthink me, then I need a lot of humility. To change the metaphor, probably one of the greatest field strategist of all times is Napoleon Bonaparte. He out thought the generals of Europe for a long time. There was a General Wellington who engaged with Napoleon in the Iberian campaign in Spain, and he began to study everything that Napoleon did. And in studying him, he learned some of the weak points in Napoleon's strategy and redesigns his strategy and at Waterloo is able to defeat Napoleon.

We know this and we're seeing it very much playing out in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, that we all thought that it would be a three-day war. And Ukraine would capitulate. The Ukrainians outplayed the Russians, and made the Russians look very bad for a time being. Whether there's a true stalemate or not on the field, what's happened is both sides have adapted. When you go into any war, you're going to play with rules, strategies from the previous battle, and those who survive adapt really quickly. And so what I would say is, when you're against a really strong player, you now have to think, how do I adapt? What can I draw on? And this goes back to my whole idea of release the mines. I'm just not smart enough. I used to when I was young, I thought I was like smartest person in the room.

Now I never want to be the smartest person in the room. What I want to do is release the minds of people around me. There are people... Like today in my class, I'm going to have one of my former students. She's so intelligent. She teaches machine learning and artificial intelligence at Berkeley. She's a venture capitalist. Her name's Joyce Shen. I'm going to give a shout-out to her. She's so much smarter than me. And I'm going to have her talk about venture capital, but also we're going to talk about what changed in open AI just yesterday, because I'm not smart enough to understand all the math and things. Joyce, I don't know if she's smart enough to understand all the math but she's smarter than I am. And as a leader in my classroom, I want her to come in. And then I have students in my classroom who are smarter than I am on these fields. They've had jobs I'll never have. To me, it's really fun to not be the smartest person in the room.

Hal Weitzman: Does that mean you're a Agamemnon type?

Greg Bunch: I don't know that I'm that great at social capital. I would say as I've gotten older, and this sounds prideful to say it, I've gotten more humble. And what I do is I just try to surround myself with people who are competent, who are high achievers, people who want to accomplish great stuff. One of the things about teaching entrepreneurship is your notes can never get yellow, because if you're out of date, the students know it. And I don't use paper notes anymore. But I had a teacher at Harvard that I went to Harvard to study with because his book was so good, and I got to class and he was actually reading the draft of his book. And the notes were yellow, and it became a metaphor for me. You've got to stay fresh. And when you teach entrepreneurship or growth strategy, you can't fall behind. And a little bit it's terrifying. I wake up every day and think, did I fall behind today? And today I actually found out I felt exponentially behind between yesterday and today, AI had moved exponentially and I'm trying to catch up.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. So let me take you back to this framework though, Elon Musk is Odysseus. What are examples of the other two types, the Agamemnons and the Achilles?

Greg Bunch: So I loved Tim Cook and I loved Tim Cook because I didn't get him at first. He is, as far as I can tell, one of the best Agamemnon players on the planet. He doesn't draw attention to himself except when he feels like as CEO. He needs due to a public role. He's able to put together incredible supply chains all over the world. He can handle all kind of geopolitical issues, moral issues. He's a remarkable kind of behind the scenes business person, and he's created the most valuable franchise on the planet. To be honest, when he was given the role of CEO, I thought, well, he's no Steve Jobs and he isn't a Steve Jobs. He's taken the company exponentially more than Steve Jobs took it. And I think it's mostly through Agamemnon play. As far as I know, all great leaders probably draw someone Odysseus and someone Achilles, but he is great at pulling people together.

So I would say he would be in that category, probably a Jamie Dimon in banking world would be that way. When I first encountered Jamie Dimon is when he came to Chicago and he seemed more like an Achilles player. He won by force and skill. Today he wins by diplomacy, and he out thinks a lot of people. So I would say early Jamie Dimon was probably more Achilles, current Jamie Dimon's probably more Agamemnon. I don't know about Sundar Pinchai, he might be an Agamemnon player, probably to hold Google together as an Agamemnon. I'd have to run through the Rolodex. In startup in early, early stage startup I find that people tend to index on one. Like the brilliant computer scientist who is writing code is a technical founder but is the CEO, that's an Achilles player. Some of the Peter Thiel's, Elon Musk's in the early days at PayPal and things like that, they were already playing some Odysseus games.

Reid Hoffman is a gentler Odysseus player. He's so interesting. On his own podcast he talks about how he grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons and was a dungeon master. And how the dungeon master has to get in the mind of others out to keep them on to playing. He's probably an Odysseus and an Agamemnon, but he wasn't a technical founder. So in startup you'll see the technical founder would be the Achilles. The person who maybe is the dungeon master is probably an Agamemnon type. And then there's some that are just the pure business types who see a business opportunity and they go out and they recruit people.

Hal Weitzman: Greg, what can people do with this framework? If I work in a company, does it help me to identify which type of strategist my boss is or what should I do with this?

Greg Bunch: Yeah, so I think one of the easiest ways to think about it is in negotiation, to understand how the other person plays and how they play under different circumstances, because these are often situational. Under different situations, you draw on different characters. It helps to know your own skill. Are you really the best engineer in the room and the CEO? Then you draw on your Achilles skill. You need to be aware that you're really not going to grow a great company if you're always the best engineer, unless you can find somebody around you who can then run the business as an Agamemnon or maybe an Odysseus player. So as you're thinking about succession, you have to think about what's your skill. I know that I'm a generalist, and so I look for Achilles player. People who are tremendous technologists or tremendous finance people or tremendous operations people, and I let them play the Achilles role there.

I think as the company matures and as you move up, social capital is the game, and social capital is the Agamemnon thing. I've worked with some founder CEOs who are so proud of their Achilles skills when they really need to develop Agamemnon skills, and they weren't able to make that transition. And that's very difficult. If they've lost control of the company, they get promoted to chief technical officer, and they're very frustrated with it because they couldn't cross the chasm to being an Agamemnon. They had to be the smartest person in the room, and maybe they were that 10X or a 100X engineer that we talk about. I have one in mind, particularly who's probably one of the finest engineers I know. He just never could cross the chasm to be a great manager.

Hal Weitzman: To come back to Musk, you said that he's an example of someone who's all three if he leans a bit more Odysseus, but I wonder the social capital stuff. He's alienated so many people, both who used to work for him and at other institutions.

Greg Bunch: So he's one of those people I would never count out. He would never listen to me for advice, I would say he needs a partner who is a transformer. We saw this in the early days of Google when Larry Page and Sergey Brin weren't ready to run the business, and they brought in Eric Schmidt. We see this in other places. A friend of mine who's now passed away was a brilliant trader. He knew he needed to build a company that wasn't just on his skill. He knew he didn't have the social capital to do it, so he brought in somebody to kind of handle the social capital and it grew the company. It was one of the largest trading companies in the world when it was sold because the founder realized he didn't have that social capital skill and put somebody there. But Elon Musk just the richest guy on the planet.

Hal Weitzman: Sure. So does that mean if you are good enough as an Odysseus, you don't need so much Agamemnon?

Greg Bunch: Well, it goes back to the concept that I often say it's one of the most important formulas, I learned it from a good friend of mine here, Jim Schrager who says, success is a function of three things. Actually, I've adapted it, all outcomes are a function of three things, and that's strategy, execution and luck. So I think Elon Musk is one of the best strategists playing the game today. He executes often really well. He has been really lucky, sometimes he's caught some tailwinds that have really propelled him. If he gets a big headwind, I don't know how well he can execute his way out of it, because he has alienated a lot of people. And I haven't studied his bench strength. If I were an A player, I wouldn't want to work for him. I had a mentor who was the head of McKinsey Consulting at one point.

I met him after he was head of McKinsey. He was famous for just beating up McKinsey consultants and bringing them into line. He then had a private equity firm, and what he would say to me is, "What I do is I hire eight players. I squeeze every drop of juice out of them and then give them a golden parachute and throw them away and look for a new one. Well, I don't want to work for a person like that. And my instinct is the best of the best managers wouldn't want to work for Elon Musk, but you can get a pretty good manager who would like to work for Elon Musk. So then if the game can be won with strategy and weaker execution and then some luck, I think he wins. If the game is a game where you really have to win on execution, my instinct is he's just going to have to get really lucky.

Hal Weitzman: Greg, it is always so much fun to have you on the podcast. Thank you very much for joining

Greg Bunch: Oh, you're welcome. It's a blast.

Hal Weitzman: That's it for this episode. To learn more, visit our website at chicagobooth.edu/review. When you're there, sign up for our weekly newsletter so you never miss the latest in business-focused academic research. This episode was produced by Josh Stunkel. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and please do leave us a five-star review. Until next time, I'm Hal Weitzman. Thanks for listening to the Chicago Booth Review Podcast.