Michael Lissack

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Michael Lissack (born 1958) is an American business executive, author, business consultant [1] and former director of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence. [2] In 2019 Lissack was inducted into the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences. [3]

Contents

Lissack was managing director in the municipal bond department at Smith Barney, and came into prominence as the whistleblower, [4] who exposed a yield burning scandal in the 1990s, whereby financial firms made illegal profits from the structuring of U.S. government investment portfolios associated with municipal bonds. [5]

Biography

Lissack received his BA in American Civilization and Political Economy in 1979 from Williams College, and his MPPM in Business from Yale University in 1981. Later in his career in 2000 Lissack received a doctor of business administration degree from Henley Management College in the United Kingdom.

After his graduation from Yale, Lissack started at Smith Barney, where he became managing director and served in this position until 1995. From 1999 - 2017 he was the director of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence. From 1999 to 2004, Lissack also served as the editor-in-chief of Emergence: A Journal of Complexity Issues in Organizations and Management now known as E:CO.[ citation needed ]

Lissack was a candidate for county commissioner in Collier County, Florida, in 2002 and in 2006. [6] He briefly taught business and public policy at the Central European University. [7] [8] Lissack was the president of the American Society for Cybernetics from 2015 to 2020. [9]

Work and controversies

Praise for Lissack

In 1999 Worth Magazine described Lissack as one of "Wall Street's 25 smartest players" [10] [11] and as one of the 100 Americans who have most influenced "how we think about money" in 2001. [12]

Yield burning scandal

In 1994, Lissack exposed a major yield burning scandal on Wall Street. [5] The issue was eventually settled by a number of firms for over $200 million, [13] to which Lissack was entitled to at least 15% per federal whistleblower laws. Lissack used some of these funds for charitable purposes including endowing a professorship in social responsibility and personal ethics at his alma mater, Williams College. [14]

In February 1998, Lissack entered into a voluntary agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission whereby he was banned from the securities industry for five years and paid a $30,000 fine, [15] as part of an arrangement by Lissack's legal team for Lissack to be on record as taking some responsibility for the scandal. [16]

In 1998 Lissack was charged by the Manhattan District Attorney's office with making online solicitations for people to harass executives of his former employer, Salomon Smith Barney, by calling them at company headquarters and in some instances their homes. [17] He pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment (a violation and lesser offense than the misdemeanor harassment charge with which he was originally charged [18] ), admitting he sent phony e-mails to Salomon Smith Barney employees. [19] [20] The guilty plea was the result of "a prolonged feud between Smith Barney and Lissack over his whistle-blowing allegations of abuses by the firm and other participants in the $1.3 trillion municipal bond business". [19] As part of the plea, Lissack was not sentenced to jail and paid no fine. [19]

Alleged harassment of Timnit Gebru

In February 2021 it was reported that Lissack engaged in a campaign against Timnit Gebru following her departure from Google including an extensive twitter campaign and emails to her and her supporters. Gebru was a co-author of a paper On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? [21] the publication of which resulted in her departure from Google. Gebru stated that Lissack was stalking her and colleagues. [22] In consequence he was blocked for a period from Twitter for harassment. Lissack's response stated that his goal had been to ensure downloads of this critique of Gebru's co-authored paper which had resulted in her exit from Google. Jeff Dean, lead of Google's AI division, denied any connection with Lissack and asked him to cease making unsolicited contact with people on the subject, stating that "This kind of behavior has no place in scientific discourse". [23]

Selected publications

Lissack has written or co-authored a number of books, a selection: including

Articles, a selection

Books

In 1999 Lissack published The Next Common Sense (1999) [13] [24] This work co-authored with Johan Roos presented the concepts of Identity, Landscape and Simple Guiding Principles. These principles were used to develop the Real-Time Strategy used in the first Lego Serious Play application.

In 2011 Lissack also authored the book Coherence in the Midst of Complexity. [25]

Related Research Articles

Complexity characterizes the behavior of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, leading to non-linearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emergence</span> Unpredictable phenomenon in complex systems

In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Self-organization</span> Process of creating order by local interactions

Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when sufficient energy is available, not needing control by any external agent. It is often triggered by seemingly random fluctuations, amplified by positive feedback. The resulting organization is wholly decentralized, distributed over all the components of the system. As such, the organization is typically robust and able to survive or self-repair substantial perturbation. Chaos theory discusses self-organization in terms of islands of predictability in a sea of chaotic unpredictability.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bloomberg L.P.</span> American financial, software, data, and media company

Bloomberg L.P. is an American privately held financial, software, data, and media company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was co-founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981, with Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan, Charles Zegar, and a 12% ownership investment by Bank of America through their brokerage subsidiary Merrill Lynch.

Morgan Stanley Wealth Management is an American multinational financial services corporation specializing in retail brokerage. It is the wealth & asset management division of Morgan Stanley. On January 13, 2009, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup announced that Citigroup would sell 51% of Smith Barney to Morgan Stanley, creating Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, which was formerly a division of Citi Global Wealth Management. The combined brokerage house has 17,646 financial advisors and manages $2 trillion in client assets. Clients range from individual investors to small- and mid-sized businesses, as well as large corporations, non-profit organizations and family foundations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salomon Brothers</span> Former American investment bank

Salomon Brothers, Inc., was an American multinational bulge bracket investment bank headquartered in New York City. It was one of the five largest investment banking enterprises in the United States and a very profitable firm on Wall Street during the 1980s and 1990s. Its CEO and chairman at that time, John Gutfreund, was nicknamed "the King of Wall Street".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francis Heylighen</span> Belgian cyberneticist (born 1960)

Francis Paul Heylighen is a Belgian cyberneticist investigating the emergence and evolution of intelligent organization. He presently works as a research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he directs the transdisciplinary "Center Leo Apostel" and the research group on "Evolution, Complexity and Cognition". He is best known for his work on the Principia Cybernetica Project, his model of the Internet as a global brain, and his contributions to the theories of memetics and self-organization. He is also known, albeit to a lesser extent, for his work on gifted people and their problems.

LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is a facilitation methodology developed at The Lego Group. Since 2010 it is available under an open source community-based model. Its goal is improving creative thinking and communication. People build with Lego bricks 3-dimensional models of their ideas and tell stories about their models. Hence the name "serious play".

Cognitive complexity describes cognition along a simplicity-complexity axis. It is the subject of academic study in fields including personal construct psychology, organisational theory and human–computer interaction.

Shannon Grant is a former Australian rules footballer who was a midfielder in the AFL. He began his career at the Sydney Swans in 1995 before moving to the Kangaroos in 1998 and being a part of their 1999 premiership side, in which he also won the Norm Smith Medal for best on ground. In 1996, he actually played against North Melbourne in the Grand Final, playing on the losing side of Sydney.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">José Huizar</span> Mexican-American politician

José Luis Huizar is a Mexican-American former politician who served as a member of the Los Angeles City Council from 2005 to 2020.

Internet-related prefixes such as e-, i-, cyber-, info-, techno- and net- are added to a wide range of existing words to describe new, Internet- or computer-related flavors of existing concepts, often electronic products and services that already have a non-electronic counterpart. The adjective virtual is often used in a similar manner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salvatore Avellino</span> American mobster

Salvatore Avellino Jr., also known as Sally, is an American mobster and former caporegime in the Lucchese crime family who was involved in labor racketeering in the garbage and waste management industry on Long Island, New York. Avellino also served as right-hand man and chauffeur to boss Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Society for Cybernetics</span> Organization

The American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) is an American non-profit scholastic organization for the advancement of cybernetics as a science, a discipline, a meta-discipline and the promotion of cybernetics as basis for an interdisciplinary discourse. The society does this by developing and applying cybernetics’ concepts which are presented and published via its conferences and peer-reviewed publications. As a meta-discipline, it creates bridges between disciplines, philosophies, sciences, and arts. The ASC is a full member of the International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR).

Friedrich Paul Cilliers was a South-African philosopher, complexity researcher, and Professor in Complexity and Philosophy at Stellenbosch University. He was known for his contributions in the field of complex systems.

Johan Roos is a Swedish organizational theorist known for his work on intellectual capital and measuring the intellectual performance of companies. He currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Hult International Business School, previously having served as President of Copenhagen Business School and Dean of the Stockholm School of Economics.

The 2018 Google walkouts occurred on November 1, 2018 at approximately 11 am. The walkout had a large number of participants. The employees demanded five concrete changes from the company: an end to forced arbitration; a commitment to end pay inequality; a transparent sexual harassment report; an inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct; and elevate the Chief of Diversity to answer directly to the CEO and create an Employee Representative. A majority of the known organizers have left the company since the walkout and many continue to voice their concerns. Google agreed to end forced arbitration and create a private report of sexual assault, but has not provided any further details about the other demands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timnit Gebru</span> Computer scientist

Timnit Gebru is an Eritrean Ethiopian-born computer scientist who works in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), algorithmic bias and data mining. She is a co-founder of Black in AI, an advocacy group that has pushed for more Black roles in AI development and research. She is the founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR).

Robin Smith is an American politician who served as the Representative for Tennessee's 26th state house district, beginning in 2018. She is a member of the Republican Party. In March 2022, she resigned and pleaded guilty to honest services wire fraud.

References

  1. ↑ Michael Lissack fights back, files a countersuit against Bonita Bay Group. Naples Daily News, February 10, 2010
  2. ↑ "Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence".
  3. ↑ "The International Academy for Systems and Cybernetics Sciences IASCYS". iascys.org.
  4. ↑ Scammell, Henry (2005). Giantkillers: The Team and the Law That Help Whistle-Blowers Recover America's Stolen Billions. Grove Press. p. 320. ISBN   978-0-8021-4188-0.
  5. 1 2 Accuser in the Muni Bond Industry, New York Times, March 3rd, 1995
  6. ↑ Batten, Brent (5 March 2006). "Brent Batten: Lissack's county, not candidacy, imaginary". Naples Daily News. Archived from the original on 9 February 2015.
  7. ↑ "Welcome to the blogosphere". 2005-11-25.
  8. ↑ "Michael Lissack's Profile - Technorati". Archived from the original on 2013-02-03. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  9. ↑ "American Society for Cybernetics".
  10. ↑ Lissack, Michael; Roos, Johan (February 2001). "Be Coherent, Not Visionary". Long Range Planning. 34 (1): 53–70. doi:10.1016/S0024-6301(00)00093-5.
  11. ↑ Worth Magazine, October 1999
  12. ↑ Worth Magazine, October 2001
  13. 1 2 UPDATE/MICHAEL R. LISSACK; Wall Street Expatriate, The New York Times , April 14th, 2002
  14. ↑ "Four Professors at Williams College Receive Named Chairs". 22 June 2023.
  15. ↑ "Michael Lissack: Admin. Proc. Rel. No. 34-39687 / February 20, 1998".
  16. ↑ Giantkillers: The Team and the Law That Help Whistle-Blowers Recover America By Henry Scammell
  17. ↑ "Ex-Investment Banker Charged". The New York Times. 1 August 1998.
  18. ↑ "Ex-Banker Pleads Guilty". Associated Press .
  19. 1 2 3 Ross, Barbara (September 16, 1998). "Salomon Accuser Admits E-Mail Harassment Guilt". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on May 27, 2012. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  20. ↑ Ross, Barbara (1998-09-17). "Former Salomon Smith Barney Investment Banker Pleads Guilty". Knight Ridder/tribune Business News. Archived from the original on 2012-11-06.
  21. ↑ http://faculty.washington.edu/ebender/papers/Stochastic_Parrots.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  22. ↑ "Men in tech are harassing Black female computer scientist after her Google ouster". The Daily Dot . 3 February 2021.
  23. ↑ "JeffDean response about Lissack". 5 March 2021.
  24. ↑ Trapp, Roger. "Book Of The Week; The old common sense will not do". The Independent . April 14, 1999. Retrieved May 29, 2012.
  25. ↑ Lissack, Michael. "Publications". lissack.com. Retrieved May 29, 2012.
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