This week, Elon Musk changed the name of Twitter to "X". "Soon the birds will be gone," he tweeted - no, X'ed- afterwards. What a great reminder of how often it is that CEOs seem desperately out of touch.

It's old water-cooler talk in corporate America - why would they do that?

I can't explain Musk, but more generally, leaders end up on the wrong side of "reasonable" for one of one of three reasons:

1. It's not their job to be right.

2. People are lying to them.

3. They are lying to you (the employees).

It's not the CEO's job to be right.

Let's start with the most reasonable: CEOs have the least front-line context and so are likely to make obvious errors because of that gap.

When thinking about delegation, leaders should be setting an initial vision and letting their teams make 80-90%+ of the decisions in the executing line, before weighing in to confirm they agree. Executives are as likely as not to do the first bit wrong.

Good leadership is designed to allow for correction.

Product roadmaps may seem strategic, but in reality they are all detail. What do users want? What are they using now? How long does it take to build things? Having accurate intuitions on this stuff is a talent, sure, but being right all the time is impossible. A health organization allows for those mistakes by tolerating dissent.

But what if yours doesn't?

People are sycophants and hierarchies amplify this.

We all tend to say what we think other people want to hear. It's a natural human instinct, because we are social creatures who like to be liked.

This effect is magnified in large hierarchies.

In large organizations, information memetically flattens and loses nuance with repetition. So do individuals' reputations. In hierarchies, incentives to echo the leader specifically are especially strong. So when it's not safe to be wrong, it's easier to defer.

Enter the well-mocked phenomenon of the HIPPO: HIghest Paid Person's Opinion (HIPPO). Deferring to the HIPPO tends to be safe. It's unmemorable, a way to escape not having done your homework. So leaders' opinions get amplified and flattened; their vassals don't challenge them; and everyone is incentivized on a personal level to believe what is easiest for them to believe -- whatever their boss already thinks.

Still, that doesn't explain the kind of "wrong" that feels most frustrating - when feedback isn't heard and everyone but a leadership team does strongly believe one thing.

Corporations are designed to withhold truth from employees

Strong hierarchies are designed to be bad at sharing information for a reason: control.

The first modern corporations were the Dutch East Indies and British East Indies Companies - financial arrangements for colonial military campaigns. Anyone who's watched A Few Good Men knows that militaries are not known for transparency: lies might be strategic, sacrifices might be made, and people might die.

Is your company operating like a military, ready for employees to die?

Probably not. But it's designed to value individuals as atomic, fungible, and ultimately expendable -- ironically, including CEOs. The corporation is designed to survive despite the interests of any constituent members.

So it makes sense that certain kinds of information are withheld.

For example, a product bet be pursued because of a legal/IP campaign. An expansion effort may be meant to dominate a competitor. Layoffs will be flatly denied until they happen.

If you're not ready for this, even a normal corporate environment can feel unsafe, gaslighting, and even traumatic.

You can survive and thrive

The key to surviving an environment that feels wrong is acceptance and clear boundaries. It is natural for executives to often seem wrong. Try to see if they are open to feedback (good ones will be). Don't let it weigh on you as a bug of your organization in particular, or, worse, as something wrong with you.

And let me know (here or privately) -- have you worked in an organization that felt wrong? What were people wrong about? How did you cope and thrive?