Written – November 11, 2021
With Facebook in every major business news story for the past month, I keep thinking, “why is Twitter out of the limelight?” So, I decided to research and write my own profile of Founder/CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey.
Nephew to a Catholic Priest serving the poor in the Appalachian Mountains, Jack Dorsey is one of the only people on the planet to actively serve as CEO of multiple publicly traded companies, Twitter and Square (one other being Elon Musk) . Like Steve Jobs, Dorsey had an ‘exile-and-return’ career path after being fired from Twitter only to be brought back. While Dorsey has these elements of power, he differs strongly from his competitor, Mark Zuckerberg, and seems to “never flex” his power as a Wired Magazine profile explains.
Dorsey grew up in St Louis, Missouri. His father was an entrepreneur and his mother, an artist and homemaker. Dorsey is known for his wide variety of interests outside of business.
In one Rolling Stone interview, he was given flack for posting on Twitter his sleep behaviors showing he averaged 8.5 hours per night. The author questioned if the sleep indicated he is too laissez-faire while running companies as powerful as Twitter and Square. Dorsey disagreed saying balance is important. He has a wide variety of interests as a licensed masseuse, known for his week-long meditation retreats, and a fashion designer.
One aspect of Dorsey that interests me in Dorsey, in contrast to Facebook/Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, is his public humility. Considering his public profile, that may seem ridiculous, so let me explain.
Dorsey is known as being a transparent but “hands off” manager compared to Zuckerberg, according to WSJ. This stems from a belief that when we act alone, we will act out of fear. In his Rolling Stone profile, Dorsey explained that there must be radical transparency in technology because it will help us work better together. “Technology makes us feel irrelevant. If we can’t be transparent about our intentions and what our technology is doing, we’re feeding into that fear of irrelevance.” To Dorsey, fear is the root of our problems and why he works towards transparency. In one famous move, Dorsey posted a tweet saying he would donate 30% of his wealth to fund COVID-19 relief and other causes. He included a Google Doc with live tracking of where his donations go. You can still see the tweet today.
It may be ridiculous to say a billionaire tech CEO has humility, but there is a fear Dorsey has of his own humanity and ability to fail that are a breath of fresh air in the cocky, over-confident executive world.
Dorsey’s godfather is a Catholic priest, Dan Dorsey, who serves the poorest of the poor in the Appalachian Mountains. Catholics, of course, believe we are doing the work of God here on earth. Not for our own glory, but as humble slaves of God. Dorsey seems to fear his own power in making decisions at Twitter. Wired claims Dorsey has “anxiety about his untrained capacity for moral discernment” when it comes to kicking users off the platform, be it Nazis or Trump. He has the belief that the work they are doing is bigger than him and his vision, “Twitter wasn’t something we really invented. It was something we discovered. Like suffering, like samsara, Twitter was just always there.”
With what little I can access about Dorsey; I appreciate his interest in a variety of things and intentionally pursuing rest and solitude. I can sense elements of humility in his decision-making that could be better emulated by other executives.
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Joshua Ballantine 