On examples I have no idea,
Given the leader is Solms, the broader question to which you refer was well in place long before Patton's hiring.
I have no good sense of what Patton's role will be with respect to "leading" and the degree with which he is to be a decider or an implementer.
I have no idea as to whether Solms felt Wave lacked a hard-nosed manager and he got Patton, or whether Solms thought that he himself tends to be a bit too hard-nosed, and picked somebody from his past to be the people person or any variety of other possibilities, but in any event I do not see Patton as the leader of Wave. If so, then I would definitely be concerned. "Chief of Staff" sounds implementer to me - not leader, decider, visionary etc. it would seem that if what you say is a problem, then the problem started back in Nov of 2013. But that is just how I see it.
I have some familiarity with situations where the creative folks are in one bucket that is managed by another bucket (lead by e.g. full bird Col) and there being no evidence of the flight of imagination to which you refer.
It would seem to me that the hiring of Patton is one of experience/familiarity, Solms drawing on someone he knows. It may be the taxidermist on a space station as you refer, or it could be an accountant switching from doing accounting for a hardware store to doing accounting for Victoria Secrets (yea I know, they are both retail), my point is I have no idea if the specific role "Chief of Staff" is in this case fungible requiring only a broadly applicable managerial skill set. Obviously Solms thinks it is, and he could easily be wrong or right IMO.
The above content is my opinion.
