 Good evening, good morning, good afternoon wherever you are joining us from. My name is Abhijit Bhaduri. I work as a leadership and talent coach. I work with organizations to talk about their leadership, talent and culture strategies. Every week we bring you some kind of an interesting person whose work can really change the way you work and think and look at life. And today I have one such person who is going to talk to you about what it takes to be a polymath. I mean, if you have more than one interest, does it make you a polymath? Does having two interests make you a polymath? Does three interests make you a polymath? And when you say interests, what could that particular thing mean? So those are questions that we are going to explore today. But one of the things that I must tell you that I am going to ask him about whether it is possible for someone to become a polymath at any stage of their life. And is it a good idea for an entrepreneur to be a polymath? There are lots of questions. And so without any further ado, let me get started and I'm going to play this little music for you. And I have with me my friend Michael Rocky. Michael joins us from Rio, Rio de Janeiro. Did I get the pronunciation right? Thank you so much for being with us today. Just in terms of, you know, I always think that I have everyone's bio which you would have read when I posted about our show today. But I'm going to ask Michael to introduce himself and let us get started. So Michael, how do you describe yourself? What are you all about? You know, what is your interest? And how did you pick up this whole field of being a polymath? The only polymath that I can think of is Leonardo da Vinci who, you know, used to draw, paint, design aircrafts and, you know, write and crypto, all kinds of things. So maybe, you know, there are other people that I can think of. Satyajit Ray who was an Indian filmmaker, he used to actually, you know, besides of course, doing cinematography, he wrote short stories, he illustrated them, he used to do all the scene planning, he composed music, he wrote music, he played instruments, he drew all those things. So my God, I mean, is that many set of things that you have to do to be qualified as a polymath? Over to you, Michael. Okay, thank you. Thank you so much for the invitation and it's a pleasure to be here talking about this fascinating topic. So it's funny because my, I didn't know this word polymath for many years, so it spent my life using other words like versatility, being a jack of all trades, but nothing, nothing, none of these words really, really stroke a chord, so really could be something that I identified with. And I only knew of this word, word polymathy, in 2000, in late 2010, when I was reading a book from Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden is the name of the book, and he was talking about how different cultures treat knowledge and the people who produce knowledge. And at the end of the chapter, he was talking about those people, like Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, others, that have so many interests and that could unite them or combine those different sets of knowledge to produce so many new things, and not only new things that are useful, that can change or even reframe the path of a domain. So, and then I just, this word just struck a chord with me, that's something so interesting, and that I can relate to that idea of not only being like a butterfly in many places, it's cool, but just trying to get some substance out of different fields and different realms of human action, because it's not only about like book knowledge, it is about the different domains of a human experience. So it is about of experience, of doing sports as well, and then something that's more emotional, like poetry or music, and something more rational, like mathematics, and etc. So, and you had, in my view, from previous studies, that in the past, for example, the Greek education for, you know, the wealth and rich and kings there in ancient Greece, they followed this kind of structure. So, athletics, when you're young, so you must know how to defend yourself, how to command the troop, then you have to know the classics, the poetry, the all the cultural background that makes that part of the world unique. And then, of course, for rulers and for people that are going to be in a leadership position, you have to understand the mechanics of the world. Of course, they didn't have mathematics and engineering like we do today, but they had the state of the art of knowledge that they had to know, which would be some kind of closer to what we know as hard sciences. And I knew that it existed, but we didn't have a word for that. And then polymathy make it work for me. However, after this spark of interest, I went to search to seek for more information about that. And I couldn't find them much structured knowledge. I found blog posts, magazine articles, some people here and there talking about their own experience or their own understanding of what polymathy is, of what being a polymathic person is. But, you know, I needed something more than opinions. So I tried to seek this structured knowledge about that. And at that point, I decided in my life that doing research was something that was in line with my professional ambitions, let's say, at that moment of my life. Prior to that, I worked in the IT industry. I was an English teacher, I was a cabinet attendant to be able to fly the world. So I had also this range of experiences. And then I thought that it would be a cool pass. And then I started studying polymathy seriously. And then I met some researchers. One of the most important of them is Robert Ruth Bernstein. And he started this, practically, he rekindled the research, the modern research on polymathy. And I was fortunate to be in contact with him and Michelle Ruth Bernstein as well. So we shared some presentations in the American Psychological Associations and other places. And then going further, I wanted to understand the personality and like the natural drivers that lead, that can lead a person to become a polymath. So I went to study the determinants at the psychological and neurochemistry level. And then I met another psychologist called Irina Trofmova. She's from Russia originally. And she has been in McMaster University in Canada for many years. And she has a fascinating line of research where she tries to understand what are the most consistent kind of behaviors that humans have. And she has 12 of them. And I was talking to her, okay, can you predict who's going to be a polymath? And she said, I think I can. So she got her map, let's say, and she was talking to me about which characteristics would be found in polymathic people since they are young and which ones they would have to work on to achieve this polymathic status and which ones would be contrary, would be negatively associated with polymathic. And it was four years ago. And I finally, this year, last year, I finished doing the analysis, and it was spot on. Those characteristics really predicted who was more polymathic. And then I joined last year, the Department of Entrepreneurship at Louisville, University of Louisville. So I'm doing a lot of research at the interface of polymathy and entrepreneurship. So I tried to see if there is a connection and which dimensions of polymathy are help people be more entrepreneurial. And those are some cool research findings that we have. So that was my pass. So I started as an interest one day reading a book by chance, then going after that meeting people and drawing from different knowledges from creativity research, psychology, neuroscience. And then entrepreneurship studies. So that's what I'm doing right now, trying to connect all these dots. So you're quite a polymath yourself. I mean, if I were to think about, you have a PhD in finance, and then you worked as a system engineer, then you worked as a cabin attendant, and then you've done your PhD again in the field of polymathy. And now you're sort of bringing in entrepreneurship. So now I have two sort of areas that I want to pursue with you. One of which is you said that there was some of the research that you predicted that you came across which can predict that where a person is likely to turn out to be a polymath in the future. And what would that be? I mean, so what are some of those characters you talked to me about a couple of them? Yes, for sure. So it always started with which characteristics of human behavior can we identify systematically, and that are consistent in life. For example, if you are like this one day, in another day or different, it's like it's mood, it's something related to a more fickle characteristics of a person. We wanted the more stable characteristics. And the stable characteristics, they have to be connected with our biology simply by the fact that we are biological chemical machines walking and trying to make sense in this world. So if it doesn't have a connection with biology, it must be wrong, because everything that we do is fueled and driven by how our biology works, right? So this model came from Irina Trufmova from a very long image of researchers going back to Yvonne Pavlov, the guy from the famous experience with the dog. Yeah, but what people don't know that they are kind of forefathers or grandparents of what we understand today as neuroscience, he and Alexander Luria. So in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, it was the time that they called they had big ideas with a small data. And today we have big data and small ideas. So those people are trying to make sense of the world, of nature, but they couldn't perform the analysis that we can do. And today we can perform so many analysis, but people are afraid to take chances to take risks at the grander theories because they can be attacked from so many sides, okay? So we don't worry about that and try to get those ideas back and try to understand what are those characteristics. And she ended up with 12 characteristics based on our natural systems, okay? So what does an animal, a living thing do to exist? So this same person, us, we have to collect information from the world and then act in the world. So there are two basic systems. And the third system, we are not just like collecting, doing all the time. Sometimes we have to stop and keep doing the same thing. So we have the maintenance system. We have three basic systems that fit neatly together with how the biology works, with how the neural neural system works. So the efferent system brings information, the afferent system integrates the action into the world. And then we have the system of maintenance of actions. So for example here, we're using... Let me just, you know, just so that I can keep pace with your thought that you're saying one thing that people do is to gather the information. Second, you said is that they need to act on it. And the third is that you need to do it repetitively so that, you know, there is maintenance of that. And what is the characteristic that predicts, you know, give me two characteristics that can predict that somebody is going to be polymath, you know? What is the early indication? I'm going to go there right now. So at the intellectual level, a polymath person has, or not has, but is inclined to gather a lot of information. It's an inclination, a natural inclination. So the persons like that, since they are kind of babies. So some babies, they are more still. And some babies are like, you know, so it's very early. So that's one characteristic. And in her research, in my research, now we call that probabilistic processing. So they want to process everything and try to make sense of everything. So they are, they are not quiet. They want to connect the dots between... Yeah, they are not quiet until they understand, until they connect, until they make a theory of why this causes that, why this goes together with that, and not this. So this is the kind of processing that's called probabilistic... That's the first one. The second one is about plasticity. So the first one is more about gathering information, making sense of the information, right? Plasticity is how fast and how effective you can integrate new actions when things change. So you make a plan, okay? I'm going from A to B. Then something happens, a pandemic. I can't do this pass of A to B as I thought before. So people with more plasticity, they are, they find it easier to change paths, to integrate... More flexible, more adaptable. More adaptability. So one you said is the ability to connect different things and form their theories on their head. That's one. The second is, you know, they should be able to be adaptable because, you know, now we can sort of see that, okay, this has changed. So now I can still do something. So be able to look at that. Is there a third one that we can... Yeah, there is. And the third one is the capacity to sustain attention. Why is this so important and so neglected today? Because if you go to the creative people right in the world, the great people, they didn't create something out of nothing. They first amassed knowledge. They first had quality in their pieces of knowledge. But you have quality in something. First, you have to stay, sit down and learn in depth, okay? Or if you're doing sports, you have to train a lot as well. So you must have the ability to concentrate. And why do I talk so much about this point? Because today there are so many things that are trying to buy your attention, to distract you and like the people today, if they are not careful, their attention is going to be all the time, you know, taken from by something, by someone who wants your attention to them. So you have the ability to drive your attention to attain a goal. Because polymathic people, in contrast with dilettants and other people that are not more profound, they are achievers. They don't need to finish all of their projects. Some projects fail. We abandon them. It's normal. But some of them we do have to finish. If you can't finish at least one project, so it's going to be detrimental to your polymathic. So it's important to have quality. Let me pause and just sort of make sense of all the things that you talked about so far. So Michael, one of the things you talk about in, you know, one of the predictors of being a polymath is that you have interests in multiple things, but you are able to take enough information to be able to connect the dots and find and make a theory of how things work. So that is one element of it. The second element you said is about adaptability, that, you know, polymathic people are adaptable. So if you look at, you know, someone like Satyajit Ray or even Mari Curie, you know, who had Nobel Prize in physics and chemistry, two fairly diverse disciplines, if you will, is able to take all the information from one, make sense of it, also take and build on that into something else and then sort of, you know, go with that. So that's your second characteristic. And the third element, which also to some extent, if you sort of look at it, is yes, you dabble, you know, when people confuse polymathy with jack-of-all-trades, it's not. I mean, jack-of-all-trades is just, you know, doing a little bit of everything every day. Polymaths are people who will stay the course and pursue something over a span of time. Yeah. And, you know, they'll keep refining it. So, you know, what you talked about in the human process that you are able to maintain and build that very deeply, that is the third characteristic. So people who are polymaths, they don't just learn one sentence of, let's say, Portuguese and then say, okay, I know how to say that. I know how to speak Portuguese. No, but they would have studied it enough to be able to sort of acquire a certain degree of expertise. Have I got the model that you are working on so far? What else is there to understand polymathy? Yeah, just to add one word. So I call it the level that you have to reach to qualify as that. You need to have a command of that subfield or that area, you know, a subarea that you are working. Okay. When you have this command, then you can join the dots in a really effective way. If not, it's half a hazard. It's kind of, you know, it has to be based on a network that has quality in that. Okay. So it doesn't have quality in first place. So which means in, you know, I'm hearing another element, which is that when you have multiple disciplines, you also have multiple networks. And you are able to sort of cut across those networks and connect the dots even through the relationships. Is that something that you found? Yeah, you know, in fact, we never have the ability to look like outside of our heads. The only way to think outside of the box is when you have multiple perspectives. That's the only way because we are like the blind person touching the elephant, you know, this picture, right? So we cannot, we cannot, how can I say, stop being blind? We are ever, ever blind, always blind. The only thing we can do is to have different experiences and then use our processing to make a better picture. So in order to understand things more thoroughly or in a whole, you have to use a polymathic kind of processing. So that's why that's what gives you depth of understanding as well. Perfect. So Michael, we've got a question from one of the listeners here, Navarone V, his question is, do you see the risk of linking codification of polymathic characteristics to genes, which is problematic in today's modern or political world? Even though the scientific data may be there, any idea how in the future, things like IQ, this may be misused, IQ is misused. Do you think this could also be misused? Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's go. One thing is the biology, okay? So we can say that plasticity is associated with the dopaminergic system, okay? And that sustainability of attention is the acetylcholine system, okay? This is quite consensual. But biology doesn't equal genetics, okay? So many things, they get structured after the birth, okay? Or within, you know, during pregnancy. So not necessarily everything is going to be codified at the gene, okay, of course, it's codified at the gene level, but it's going to be manifested that way. It's not, nobody's determinant in science, in terms of genetics, determining perfectly everything. It's an inclination, of course. So the genes will tell you how likely you're going to be to gain weight or not to gain weight or how the range of how tall you're going to be, but not the exact same. And these are very complex characteristics, okay? So that's a crazy mixture of genes working. And even if you have the genes, they may or may not manifest. Remember, ants have the same gene, but one gets to be a soldier, one gets to be a worker, one gets to be a queen, depending on how you feed the ant. So remember that. So genes manifest differently, and there are so many things working in an ensemble to make a person what they are, okay? Sorry, I interrupted you, please complete. Yeah, regarding IQ, same thing, of course, there are genes that make some kind of processing faster or slower or easier or harder, but that goes into the same direction, okay? So Navarone, one of the ways I would look at it is, you have IQ as one part of it, the ability to learn something, and Michael has alluded to that, but I think there are two other elements. One is how likable you are, and the third is drive. Your ability to actually pick yourself up to some extent, he did refer to both these as well in terms of the network, as well as your ability to stick to a particular subject, drive, going back and consistently performing the art or something. So there are lots and lots of students who get the same input in college, but not everybody who has graduated from the most prestigious university ends up in the same place because of a number of factors. So the world outside plays a very strong role in as much as nature does, nurture does, and then the external context also makes a difference. I mean, with the same set of, just pick a country randomly from the map and change the place where you were born and the opportunities that you will be working with will be different, so on and so forth. So yes, we can sort of certainly look at that. Anurag Vaish has another question that a person might display a polymathetic mindset which is easier to spot while destiny, destination might be far away and could be something different. So that is another element that we are sort of looking at. Michael, I want to go into this whole element that when you think of a polymath, a question I have always had, let's say there is the human resource director of a company, the person needs to know compensation benefits, the person needs to know labor laws, the person needs to know, let's say learning and development to a reasonable extent, would that role be called a polymath or that would not be called a polymath? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we have to go back to the three pillars of polymathy, right? So depth, breadth, and integration. All right, so if the person got to this level, so the person has a good enough level of depth, so let's depart from this assumption. And so the thing is, how broad you have to be, right? So how many disciplines? The thing is, each field and each profession has kind of the typical amount of knowledge that one is expected to have, right? So if you're going to work, you're going to reach a director level at a major company, you are expected to have an MBA level of knowledge, right? And MBA, you have marketing, you have finance, you have HR. So for me, it's more how can you deviate from what everybody else is doing? So for me, this breadth has to do about deviance in a good way. So what can you bring that extra from what's expected? So although it is expected, some roles are more polymathic in nature. So I agree with that. So these roles are more polymathic from the outset. You start. If you are in this role, you're more polymathic. But besides that, what else can you bring different extra? And which works, of course. Doesn't work. You just filter out and then bring something else. So for me, a polymathic person is a person that is not satisfied with the set of knowledges that are expected to their role. So they're bringing something that's unexpected from a different field. So I would say that a polymathic HR director or in any position is a person that goes beyond what is typical, even if the role is polymathic. Okay, and go beyond bringing something from a field that perhaps people don't expect. Okay, or anything from a completely different field, like let's say a theater into HR or music into HR, etc. How many such fields does one need to be bringing in to be able to say that it's two fields enough to completely different fields that somebody is very good in data science and very good in storytelling. Is that guy a polymath or does it have to be more than two or three or four? What is that number? How many such fields? Yeah, there is no consensus. Okay, every person who studied the topic has a different number. My personal number is to have command of three different sub fields, okay, but command and apply it in at least two big projects at at least the professional level that can draw on different and unexpected sets of knowledge. Okay, so that would be for example command of marketing in HR and something else and the project to bring something extra unexpected like music or theater or sports or hard sciences. Right, so we have a question again from Anurag who says that also is it possible to roadmap polymathy journey or is it just open exploration and opportunities? Is there a predictive path? And then I also have another question from Preeti Shor, which I'll bring up in a little bit, but first this question. Is there a path one should take? Okay, so in my latest article I proposed that there are two types of things of events that can lead you towards polymathy. So one type of polymath is the pool type, so it's self-driven. So you self-direct toward polymath. So I discovered this, I want you to do that and then you go, you go, you go. But there is the push type of polymathy, so events that make you more polymathic because sometimes you lose your job and then the situation is bad and then you start the company. So when you do this movement that's pushed, perhaps you didn't want to leave your job, but because an event happens you have to learn more and then you end up being more polymathic than you were. All right, and what we have seen is that different polymaths can have very different paths. So some people started like a, more like a specialist and other people started like a butterfly, almost as Jack of all trades and a dilettante, and then they found some areas of interest. But what's more important, a polymathic person has a range of projects. They choose the projects and they achieve some level of a command in things that are different. And more importantly, they can surprise with unexpected connections. For me, which is very important for the type of polymathy that I'm interested in, which is creative polymathy, not the person that is like the hermit in the mountain having no knowledge but doesn't do anything with that. Okay, so different. I'm going to put, so you're saying that not only good enough to have an interest in many different things, just gathering knowledge, but also trying it out and creating something is an important element of polymathy. Preeti Shroff has got a comment, which is that, the great point about convergence and divergence, breadth and depth and above all, that extra mile that makes one unique thought leader and practitioner and connecting diverse, unusual dots as creativity and leadership. You also have another comment, major comment from Surendra Patil, who says that in India, according to colleges, universities, technology institutions, companies, you must have a common platform to engage the required workforce. There must be advanced HR cell with the coordinator. And to do coordination with the company related medical emergency tie ups, etc. So that's another thing. A lot of comments about the fact that you have to surprise the people with connections between different disciplines. So I guess we are sort of, so a couple of things you talked about is that there must be at least three disciplines which are not connected. Now, I'm going to sort of put a different question. When I think about someone like Roger Federer, Roger Federer is famously known to have started his life as a sportsman in everything other than tennis. I mean, so he was a swimmer, he played basketball, he played golf, he was a wrestler and then eventually and many more. Actually, he was a great athlete as well. But then he suddenly discovers tennis and of course, we all know that the rest as they say history. Do polymaths actually land up making better career choices or are they more miserable because they always think that maybe the next career choice that they do is going to make them happy. You are a polymath yourself and you've gone from multiple things which are completely unconnected. If I would say you've moved from a PhD, it's not even a general level, it's a PhD, you've got it in finance. Then you want to do a job as a systems engineer. All right, that's also at a reasonable degree of proficiency. Then you become a cabinet attendant so that you can indulge in your love for travel and then you sort of come back and you get interested in polymathy and you pursue it enough to do a PhD in polymathy and so that's a double PhD, is it? No, no, yeah, yeah. My PhD was in finance and now I'm doing studies in polymathic studies and merging with entrepreneurship. But the field is entrepreneurship now. That's why I agree. You've set a tough benchmark and then you're going to live up to it. But does it mean that you can have a polymath in sports as well? Like Roger Federal, would that be polymathy in sports and does every discipline have the ability to be polymaths? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we focus too much on some outcomes, right? So on the status of being a polymath. So what do you need to do? But in fact, what I'm more interested in is what I call a polymathic orientation. So that's a slightly different construct. One thing is that, okay, what do you have? What status, what social status you have to have to be qualified by society as a polymath, okay? But more interesting to me is, do you have a polymathic orientation? Do you guide your actions towards both dreads and deaths? And then you try to integrate that. And the next thing is the role of opportunities, okay? Perhaps if I had the opportunity, I would have been a tennis player as well, because I love tennis as well, but I never had, okay? And perhaps for Federer, now he's going to retire, we expect someday, right? He probably is going to do something different. You probably will expect that from him. He is already doing some other kind of work. The thing is, there are some pursuits in the human experience that have to be done at a certain, they have a window that you have to do that at the time. So sports, you have this window. If you don't start soon enough, you cannot get to a professional level, right? And I think Federer has this, it's a range, okay? It's a spectrum. It's not you either full polymath or not. You either have a full polymath orientation or not. I don't, of course, I don't know him, but from the information that I got, it seems that like he has a more polymath orientation, but he had this opportunity and he was so good at that. And of course, it's such a pleasurable career to be able to practice sports and be happy with that. So let's see what he does when he retires. Does he live up to the definition or not? I have another question from Bishwanath Sarangi. He asks, is there a danger of losing speciality in a core area by being a polymath? So the person sort of has a core discipline, which let's say there is a doctor. He also becomes a musician, and then he starts writing lyrics and doing all that. And then people stop coming to him as a doctor because they kind of see that music takes away so much of his time. Does it mean that there are disciplines like medicine? And I'm just sort of building on what Bishwanath has asked. It's a great question. Would people stop taking his career as a doctor less seriously because now that he is becoming a rock star? And I know everybody in India would recognize the person that I'm talking about, but would it mean that people would stop taking him seriously as a doctor? What is your Yeah, the problem is not the person within him or herself. It's how do you communicate with society? Nobody is an island, right? So you have to live, you have to show value to somebody else, to your clients, to your bosses, to whoever, right? So communication is not easy. You can be the most knowledgeable person in a subject, but not necessarily you're going to communicate that easily. So what specialty does it help you communicate very fast? What kind of value you can bring? So that's why when you build a zeta, people say, HR people say, okay, be very specific and tie up with what the vacancy is requiring because it's easier to communicate. And we are all complex beings, but your receiver doesn't have time to go deep into you, get to understand you. Only a few people will have time and want to do that. But when you go into the world, you have kind of to sell yourself. So you build this kind of persona. It's not yourself. It's a persona you build so you can communicate easier, and you can achieve your goals. Okay. But I think that should not be detrimental to you pursuing the things that make you happy. Not everything you have to communicate to everybody. But if you make a career choice, of course, you have to have this communicable, easy to communicate story because have to convince people because people are going to hire you, people are going to pay you. So that's the issue. The value that you're creating, even if you have multiple strengths, so you have to be able to create that. So yes, I can completely. So would it mean that the most extreme polymath would be a philosopher? And the reason why I asked that as Anurag has asked that question, but I am also sort of building this in, in academics, the highest discipline is philosophy. You get a PhD, doctor of philosophy. So would it mean that all the disciplines eventually merge towards philosophy? Would you say that? Oh, that's a very cool point. That's very overlooked. How that turns into bread. Because when you dig deep enough, you're going to see a collection. And that's something very cool that people, especially people that are very young, don't get that when that, how can I say some boundaries open in your boundaries? Okay. So when you, when you decide to study something, and you go deep enough, you start to see that, okay, let's, we don't even need to go to philosophy. Let's stuck with hard sciences. If you go into biology, and then you go to the cells, and the cells have atoms, and then the atoms connect. And in the end, so people, for example, that are studying the brain, they are trying to see what the, the, the electrons are making that, that can, how can I say, create our thoughts. Okay. I mean, today, you know, the discovery of, you know, a lot of the things in biology is done through engineering. You know, so actually, you have to go that deep to be able to find the connection. So what it seems is that, you know, when you do depth, even in one field, you are able to at some point of time, cross the boundaries of that discipline and actually begin to appreciate more. And then on the other hand, when you move up and sort of build breadth in multiple fields, but enough depth, you have those three pillars that you talked about, you again have the possibility of building a connection. So both ways you can have that. I mean, that's such a powerful thought that you can build it in either ways. I, you know, we are sort of today, you know, just for the listeners who joined us late, we are talking to Dr. Michael Raki. He's joining us from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and he's an expert in the area of polymaths. These are people who have at least three areas of expertise, and they have reasonable degree of depth in each one of these three areas. And they are able to see the interconnectivity between these three, which probably is the reason why they started becoming polymaths in the first place. I want to sort of put a hypothesis, you know. So I wrote this book called Dreamers and Unicorns in which one of the things that I talk about is, you know, when you look at, there are five shifts that I mentioned in the book, which are driving all the change. If you sort of look at the principles, one of them is that you need to be boundary less. In some sense, what I mean is, you know, when you think about an organization which is going to be successful, you have to start looking at many different factors to be able to be successfully competitive today. Because there was a time when, let's say, you know, your competition, if you are in the, you know, taxi business, it will come from another taxi service company, but it would not come from a delivery company. Today, that is possible. That's happening. I mean, if you look at, you know, companies which are in that food delivery model, suddenly, Zomato gets a competition from Uber, you know, because Uber gets into food delivery as well, and then so does Swiggy and so does something else. So you get competition from multiple places. Therefore, one of the thoughts that I had is, organizations need to be also polymathic, you know, because, you know, if you look at the most successful organizations, it's very hard to say what business they are in. I mean, Amazon, you know, what business is Amazon in? It's very hard. I mean, they're distributing movies in e-commerce company, but they're also in many other forms of business, you know, whether it's the web services, you know, they're doing that. They were big in the cloud space. You look at Google, you look at, so there are many examples that we can think of super successful companies, which in some sense are going to be polymaths, but it's not every company which becomes a polymath. So in that sense, maybe the number of companies which are polymaths is also limited by the number of human beings who are polymaths. Do you think going forward, polymath leaders are going to be most successful because they have the agility, they can look across disciplines, and they are going to, you know, be flexible enough to be able to sort of connect the dots and see those connections? Is that the model going forward? What do you say? Yeah, I think that the data and what you're seeing corroborates this point, and I like the sentence that change is changing. The very nature of change is now different. So what you expect as a leader, as a strategist in a company is different from what you expected in the past. Okay? And well, the thing is, since we have this acronym, VUCA, right? Everybody now knows the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. So when the world becomes more Volca, more complex, what kind of work do you need to do? So in economics, we have this idea of a static state, an ideal state, oh sorry? Set in a span of, is this how the thing's being? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then study it. Yeah, so everything works and flows inside that and there's some changes. So more and more, we can't build our models or mindsets based on that. So the dynamics are more, how can I say, the changes are more critical and they happen more often and they are qualitatively different. So what kind of person can flourish in this kind of environment? So let's do the opposite. What kind of worker we had in the past that were useful? So after the industrial revolution, the factories, people worked like robots. So the whole environment remained static, so a person at Ford Motors could hammer at the same point every time and the other person could screw at the same time. So he works like a robot. So a robot today needs the environment to be the same, right, to work. If you have a robot, I don't always have a scene that robots that take a glass of water and give other people, but if you change the position of the glass of water, the robot can work. And today, we have the opposite of that. So what kind of person, what kind of organization do you need when the environment is changing more abruptly? So you need people who can make sense fast, who can make sense of things fast, build theories with changing information. So that's the first characteristic of polymathics. You need less rigidity. So if you're too rigid, you're gonna drown, right? So that's the second characteristic of polymathics, more plasticity, the ability to change plans because of changing conditions. And finally, you must have a core of things that you do well, because if you just change and you are understanding things, but you don't have a substance, a core ability that you can build upon, you're not gonna do good, high quality products, right? You're gonna change and your product's gonna be terrible, because you didn't have in first place what it takes to do a good product or service. So it matches perfectly the characteristics of the polymathic person. So the organizations, because we have this environment that's more challenging, that has different kinds of changes, they are requiring more this kind of behavior, which fits more naturally with how polymathic people are and like to be. So that's my take. And I think that is the trend. I don't see much evidence that it's gonna be different because of all the things converging. Is that why entrepreneurs are more likely to be polymaths? Is that one? By definition, the entrepreneur, by definition is the person that changes the static state. If you go into an economics book, it's the definition of entrepreneur. So in order to change the status quo, to do something useful, you have to have all these things. You have to have the courage to try something new, to pick something that nobody else is doing right now. If you do the same things that people are doing right now, you're not an entrepreneur. You're not doing entrepreneurial action. You're doing the same thing. Sometimes it works, but it's not entrepreneurial. So it goes into the same direction. If you change, if you leave the world of the static state and you are introducing a novelty, these characteristics are gonna be fundamental. How can you get new ideas? It has to be from a different point of experience that everybody else is doing. And it's experimental. You go to a company that hires the same kind of people from the same three schools with the same background. And you go to another company that has more diversity, but people are deep enough in what they do. The second company is gonna be and it's experimentally proven that they are more creative because they have different pieces of information. There is more conflict. Sometimes you don't want conflict. You want people screwing and people hammering. You want zero conflict. But the situation today pushes you toward novel solutions. And then you have to deal with that. You have to deal with different people from different backgrounds. And then the leader has this kind of a thermostat role that not too much conflict in which things are gonna derail, but not too much conformity that nothing new is gonna rise. So the leader today had this difficult role. And I think they have to be more polymathic and allow polymathic to flourish within their teams. So things can change for the better. That's my point. You know, what are two or three things one should be able to do to be able to encourage the polymathic orientation? You know, even if I'm not a polymath, what are things I should be able to do with what you recommend? Yeah. So what makes people not polymathic? One characteristic is the fear of failure. I think that's one of the foremost characteristics. Because if you're gonna go to different areas, they have their kings and queens there, right? So you have to go into other people's territories knocking the doors that people don't expect you to be knocking onto. So you have to have this courage, this boldness and go in there and have a door at your face or fail miserably. So that's the first thing. If you are not prepared to fail and to have people slam the door at your face, it's gonna be difficult. So that's the first thing to build. But yeah, it goes on to your feeling well with yourself because some people are afraid, you know, like to show that they are pursuing something different. What people would think about me if I'm a doctor and then I show myself as a musician, okay? So there is this, I think many things are regards the person within themselves, because we have to prepare ourselves and then act upon the world. And the world is not fair. It's difficult. It has a lot of people. There is competition. There are a lot of unfair things. So I think that people who would like to be more polymathic should start there. So let me experiment more. What if I just try it, okay, just but tell a little bit. I don't like mathematics. Sometimes it's emotional. It's a trauma that the person had when they were seven years old. So just fight those traumas, fight those tears and try a little bit more. Try a little bit more would be my advice. Michael has been absolutely phenomenal. I had a couple of takeaways, one of which was that, don't be afraid to try out something completely different beyond what you've been taught. So you may have been trained to be a doctor, but if you have secretly nurtured curiosity about music, go ahead and pursue it. So pursuing your curiosity is one of the pieces that I took away from what you just said. The second piece that I thought was that, I like the idea that you said was that people who are more plastic, which is plasticity, which is another word for adaptability. To be adaptable when the circumstances change, hey, you can because of the pandemic, you have not been able to travel. So change your plan and sort of figure out what to do. And the world has actually, I think because of the pandemic been forced to be, everybody's been forced to be a lot more adaptable. And now you kind of also see that wanting to go back to office is again that resistance because we have again fallen back into that. Now, let me just continue on this. So I just think that people just sort of, they keep using the phrase, the new normal. And there is always almost this wish fantasy that the world is going to, now this is the world, I figured it out, it's not going to change. No, it is going to change. The fact that we are now having so much of debate about, should we go back once a week? Do we go back five times a week? Why should we do this? Can we work out of this? Can we do this? Can work be adaptable? I mean, I just think that it's something for all of us to think about, that whether this is a sign that we may have become too complacent and comfortable in this setting. Remember how difficult it was in the early days when we moved into the home, we said, oh my God, how can you do this from home? How can you do this? You can't do sales on Zoom. You can't do all of that. We adapted. Now it's time to re-adapt and look at the resistance the world is facing. So that is my other question that struck me when you look at that. But overall, I just want to say that it was so fascinating hearing you and talking to you and wishing you the very best for your research. And I hope that this conversation is going to invite more people to explore this. You can connect with Michael on linkedin.com. His email is, Araki Michael at gmail.com. And thank you so very much. And I hope just a hint about we have got another really super interesting guest coming up next Wednesday at 7pm. All I want to say as a hint is the hint is lost in translation. And if you can send me your guess about who do you think that guest is going to be, I'm going to send you a signed copy of my book, Dreamers and Unicorns. But you got to send in that response by tomorrow morning. So think about it and send that to me. Look forward to this. Take care. Thank you very much, Michael.