You can have the best engineers in the world, but if the person at the top wants them to build a car that looks like Homer Simpson designed it then the company is going to fail. And that's Elon's role - make decisions all day long. Engineers give him options, cost/risk trades, etc.. and he has to make the right decisions that won't lead to bankruptcy. Tens of thousands of jobs on the line if the wrong decision is made.
The key point is that Elon's decision-making tends to be very close to the coalface. He's often involved in the minutiae of factory operations at Tesla[1] and he is a core member of the rocket engineering team at SpaceX[2].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiMvQSWr-v4&t=651s
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
He was a micromanaging moron who thought he could come tell established car companies how to build cars. But then it turned out it worked because someone else had already done the work.
All of his attempts are him being a micromanaging moron before his stuff succeeds because of other people or they fail because he's a micromanaging moron.
The narrative has him as a micromanaging moron or backed by secret geniuses. Or alternatively simultaneously master manipulator.