Who is Michael Lissack?

Michael Lissack lectures on business and public policy at the CEU Business School in Budapest. He is the director of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence (ISCE) as well as the founding editor emeritus of ISCE's journal, Emergence. Dr. Lissack is also the founder and chairman of Knowledge Ventures Inc.





During the 1990's Dr. Lissack was a "Relator" and lead witness in fraud case against more than 4 dozen Wall Street firms. He led a team which recovered more than $200 million for the United States. The Wall Street Journal called him "the most prominent defector the Street has ever known." Prior to 1995, Dr. Lissack was an investment banker where he assisted state and local governments in the United States with debt financings. While his specialty was infrastructure project financings, his main task as a Managing Director of Smith Barney was to bring in "incremental revenue." He was Smith Barney's senior banker with overall responsibility for new product development, municipal derivatives, and the technical work produced by the firm's Public Finance Division.



Worth magazine recognized Dr. Lissack in 1999 as one of "Wall Street's 25 Smartest Players" and again in 2001 as one of the 100 Americans who have most influenced “how we think about money.”



Today, Dr. Lissack lives in Naples Florida and commutes monthly to Budapest where he gives "provocative" talks aimed at engaging the intellectual debate. Try a Google search on him in Hungarian.

What does he think about?

He Wears His Own Glasses is Michael's own very direct view of the world.

Recent Posts:

• Google Book Search -- Fair Use It Is Not
• France, Riots, Hungary, Gypsies: Commonalities
• European Political Correctness
• Thanksgiving, Ethics and Donald Trump
• Why Do We Allow Prescription Drug Advertisements?
• How Business School thinking led to the Katrina Disaster in the US
• Buberian Dialogue and the GMO Debate
  
  
  

Michael is a noted expert on complex systems thinking and is the executive director of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence. After five years as editor-in-chief of the journal, Emergence: Complexity and Organization, he is always thinking about things from this perspective. He even started a PhD program on the topic.

As a whistleblower, professor of ethics, and having endowed an ethics chair he is also often thinking about ethical issues.

These two interests often come together when he thinks about the shortfalls of modern management and management education. He is presently writing a book entitled MBfAke: How Elite Business Schools Have Undermined America which examines the lack of professionalism in American managers and the role of MBA programs in facilitating this moral lapse.

What does he talk about?

Michael is available to speak about:

• Going from Wall Street Whistleblower to Hungarian Social Pundit (without speaking Hungarian and while living in Florida),
• Wall Street and ethics (or my whistle-blowing),
• Management education and the dangers of MBA thinking,
• Taking a complex systems perspective to a given issue or topic
• What I learned as a serial entrepreneur
• How to conduct a Buberian dialogue
• There is life after losing all your money

You can see snippets of Michael speaking at various forums by clicking the links above. In addition you can see:

A case study: Part 1 and Part 2

Ambiguity versus Uncertainty

Note: the links above are to mp4 files optimized for Quicktime.

To navigate your MPEG-4 Player to the files go to:

http://lissack.com/wallstdangers.mp4
http://lissack.com/complexprojectmgmt.mp4
http://lissack.com/boundaries.mp4
http://lissack.com/efficiency.mp4
http://lissack.com/thinkthruacase.mp4
http://lissack.com/acase2.mp4
http://lissack.com/ambiguity.mp4

His Writing

Dr. Lissack has written and edited several books including:

• The Next Common Sense: Mastering Corporate Complexity Through Coherence
• The Interaction of Complexity and Management
• Managing Complexity in Organizations: A View in Many Directions
• Emergence: The Archives 1999-2003

His latest book (with Hugo Letiche) Coherence: Complexity and Organization is due out in the Spring from the MIT Press.

He is in the midst of writing MBfAke. The main premise of MBfAke is that most managers lack exposure to the roles and responsibilities of being a true professional. This type of training is the very backbone of most professional training – at least in the traditional professions of law, medicine, architecture, engineering etc. In these professions the would be professional is taught that the ability to make decisions on behalf of others (due to the advanced knowledge, access to information, and master skills of the professional) is accompanied by the responsibility to serve the public selflessly in making those decisions. The ability to make decisions/responsibility to the public tradeoff is an explicit part of the training and becomes an integral part of the identity of the professional. Instead, managers are usually taught a set of decision-making skills and tools and then emboldened by this new knowledge believe they have free reign to use these skills. Many of our modern problems stem from this mistaken belief.

Dr. Lissack's academic writings have appeared in the journals Organizational Research Methods, Long Range Planning, Managerial Decision, the Journal of Memetics, and Emergence. He has written op-ed pieces for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times on the topic of ethics and Wall Street Whistleblowing.

What does he do with his time?

Michael divides his time amongst his several roles:

Social commentator in Hungary (approximately one week each month)
Real estate agent in Naples Florida (see http://buy-in-naples.com)
Author (books mostly)
Lecturer (in the US, Europe and Australia)
Entrepreneur (see http://learnerslibrary.com)
Executive Director of ISCE (see http://isce.edu)

Michael and ISCE are trying to revitalize the concept of Buberian Dialogue, a means of dealing with seemingly intractable opposition. The technique seems particularly appropriate for the "let's just shout each other down" manners of current American politicos and pundits.

Michael was a candidate for County Commissioner in Collier County in 2002 and is intending to run again in 2006.

A large portion of Michael's time is devoted to Zeus (his 4 lb. long-haired Chihuahua)

What others say about Michael

Michael's whistleblowing:

• Bloomberg wrote about my "ten year" anniversary in March 2005.
• Two chapters from Henry Scammel's Giant Killers are about me.
• A nice piece from the St. Petersburg Times
• The press release from my attorneys.

Michael's work in Hungary:

• A newspaper interview
• An on-line chat

Michael's work on complexity:

• Try this reference from Onepine.
• Or this interview.
• Endorsements from LinkedIn

Michael's work on ethics:

• An article from Entrepreneur.
• An odd reference.

Michael's work as an entrepreneur:

• Endorsements from LinkedIn

Oh yes and we must remember: Michael is a reformed crook. (Full disclosure is important.)