Teamwork in Thailand triumphs over the solo ego

In this year dominated by geopolitical gloom, there was a moment of celebration without surprise. The rescue of 12 Thai boys and their football coach from a deep underwater cave has been a worldwide triumph. It was an act of engineering and strategic brilliance. International divers were selflessly acting in mortal circumstances where success was absolutely not guaranteed. Leaders and citizens around the world have hailed their achievement.

Almost everyone except Elon Musk. The technological entrepreneur and general manager of Tesla has been inserted into the crisis by proposing a "mini-submarine" that he had built to save the children. The experts judged his solution inappropriate. Vern Unsworth, one of the British divers behind the rescue, decried Mr Musk's efforts as a "PR coup" that had "absolutely no chance of working". Despite his billions and an army of 22 million followers on Twitter, Mr Musk was dismissed by the experts.

He did not take the command to leave. Over the weekend, Mr. Musk tweeted that Mr. Unsworth (who threatens to sue for defamation) was a "pedo guy" and promised to take his pod anyway to prove that he was right. His desire to overcome this argument evokes the wild instincts of his natural home in Silicon Valley, where the winner often takes everything. In technology, human lives are not directly at stake. Such urgency requires imagination, flexibility and speed – not demagoguery and the worst of technologies "move fast and break things." ".

In defaming Mr. Unsworth, widely celebrated as a hero, Mr. Musk revealed a less attractive side to his character that should not escape the attention of investors. Such personal insults suggest that he had at least one eye on improving his own reputation through this crisis.

This conflict represents two different worlds colliding. The rescue operation was a team effort; The divers who rescued the boys brought their expertise from Australia, Scandinavia, Belgium and the United States. They worked tirelessly together towards a common goal.

The rescue team is proof of the benefits of having expertise in a specific area. Divers and rescuers knew what had to be done to save the boys and put them there methodically. Mr. Musk, on the other hand, believes in the importance of taking a fresh look at complex challenges. Yet it would be naïve to think that only an individual was best equipped to deliver salvation.

The intervention of Mr. Musk also exposes a flaw in the "flat hierarchy", the thin management structure favored by Silicon Valley. If team members rely on the expertise of the other, such a structure can encourage useful collaboration. But reducing management levels – as Mr Musk recently did at Tesla – can sometimes allow managers to tinker and assert their counterproductive influence. His efforts in Thailand suggest that it was precisely the approach of the technology man.

The tragedy of the underground rescue – be it Thai trapped children or Chilean minors in 2010 – is best handled by largely anonymous people working together without ego. They do not depend on bubbling business leaders with optimism and eye-catching innovations. An offer of help in such a perilous situation is welcome. Roughly assert his own authority to the detriment of the team is not.

Thai boys were saved by a systematic collective approach. The intervention of Mr. Musk, who conceded that he could be a useful "narcissist" shows the limits of the "yes, we can" attitude of Silicon Valley. It was a situation where the last thing a trained team needed was a dose of disruption.