Given that the list was presented here "with a lot of respect and admiration for the author" I get the impression that this is simply someone who is indeed interesting to work with and validly good enough to play by those rules.

I had a boss's boss that was like a mini version of this at a menial job quite some time ago - I didn't enjoy working with him, but we got shit done quickly and efficiently, and the meetings were at least painlessly short. I vastly prefer this to working with incompetent people, and because my boss's boss was the way he was there were very few incompetent people around me in positions of any authority.