INTERVIEW, PART I
AT: Michael, what makes you an "engaging expert"?
MC: The quality of my answers. It is scary being called “an expert” since information doubles about every two years; however, it’s all relative, isn’t it? If my answers are better than your answers, well, I don’t mean you specifically. I mean better than 98.52% of everyone else’s answers, then relatively, that makes me an expert. (OK, I made up 98.52%. The extra precision of “.52” was a nice touch, don’t you think?).
Anyway, I’m comfortable enough to give a challenge: Ask any expert in the world about a specific people-issue at work, and then ask me. I’ll take my chances.
AT: How did you become, "The Engaging Guru"?
MC: Bribes. Actually a moth-like, sadistic attraction to confusion and complexity. Most people drift toward cool, simplistic answers. It’s painful buzzing around hot, blinding chaos, but the goodies in life (and epiphanies) come to those who choose emotional and cognitive uncomfortableness.
Going back to your first question, about expertise, I think, what people really pay for, is wisdom. To me, that means applying expertise to a particular situation, in a way that produces a special outcome that’s highly valuable. Wisdom is customized expertise.
As for the title “The Engaging Guru”, it’s a branding thing. I like the word “engaging”, and “The Engaging Swami” was already taken.
AT: What else helped you become an expert?
MC: Good genes. My father was a physicist engineer from MIT who quoted Shakespeare, while dancing me on his feet. True story.
Hard work! You know that book, “Think and Grow Rich”? It should be titled, “Think, then Work like Hell, Redo it a Half-Dozen Times, and Maybe Grow Rich (After you have Gone Bankrupt a few Times)”.
In today’s world there are two types of power: money and knowledge. I’m comfortable in the latter, working on the former. Have I mentioned my fees yet?
Getting back to your question, I think my personal genius is finding the patters in complexity. Understanding humans is challenging.
By the way, what’s your personal genius?
AT: Asking questions and keeping the interviewee on topic (smiling).
MC: (laughter) OK then…
Basically, I’ve taken an interdisciplinary approach. Sure I have degrees in economics and business, but the magic, the secret sauce if you will, comes from finding the fundamental principles of being human. Physics has basic principles, chemistry and biology too. I think learning, which is key to change, and individual and group behavior have fundamentals too.
There are many examples in nature of how complexity comes from a few fundamental principles. Evolution and DNA come to mind…plus mix in 3 billion years of environmental pressures.
We humans, when we really don’t know what we are talking about, tend to make things worse. Take psychology, for example. If you go to Wikipedia, you will see over 30 unique, often conflicting schools of thought attributed to psychology. How crazy is that? Pun intended.
If we put on our thinking caps, we can form some reasonable hypotheses…..