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Read the article “The Reincarnation of Mike Milken.” (Morris, K. (1999).
It’s 8 a.m. on a brilliant Sunday morning and Mike Milken, looking tanned and fit, is wide-eyed and eager to show off his library and new kitchen. Both are paneled in a blonde shade of pine that, Milken says, helps him to relax. “Listen,” he says quietly, pointing to a small fountain running just outside. Milken had that installed, too. Out by the pool, a garden is bursting with flowers. “Honeysuckle and jasmine,” the former financier says wistfully, his head tilting back as he savors the faint scents in the air. Having just finished up his yoga routine, Milken shows his meditation technique: He sits cross-legged, his elbows resting on his knees, hands extended, eyes closed. Yet even as he relaxes, the ultracompetitive Milken seems to be setting goals. “You know, if you are really good,” he says, half-smiling, “you can stop breathing.” The miracle about Michael R. Milken is that he is breathing at all. Diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer in 1993, Milken was told by his doctors that he had 12 to 18 months to live. Rather than give up, Milken counterattacked. He learned everything about his disease, took up yoga and meditation to reduce stress, and became a strict vegetarian, abandoning his diet of burgers and fries for steamed broccoli and soy shakes. So far, Milken has proven his doctors wrong: His cancer is in full remission. Had Milken not beaten the odds, cancer would have taken one of the most storied, vilified business figures of our time. From his X-shaped trading desk, Mike Milken, as everyone knows, launched a revolution that transformed the financial system forever. But he also overreached. And when he became ensnared in a federal crackdown on insider trading, Milken’s world crumbled. In the public’s mind, Milken was the iconic white-collar criminal, a symbol of everything wrong with Wall Street. It has been eight years since Milken went to jail, but the debate over who Mike Milken is and how bad his crimes were goes on. Junk-bond villain or brilliant financial innovator? There are plenty who think Milken got sandbagged with trumped up, politicized charges, and plenty more who think he simply got what he deserved. And long after many of the less reputable characters he financed have been forgotten, Milken remains controversial. Indeed, he has become something of a human Rorschach test: How you feel about Milken says more about your view of the swash-buckling business atmosphere of the late ’80s than it does about the man himself. That debate will never be fully resolved. All that is certain is that Mike Milken has moved on. As far as Milken is concerned, he has paid his penalties–a total of $1.1 billion–and done his time. But that doesn’t mean he has faded from the scene. Far from it. For the past six years, Milken has used every waking moment to rebuild his life and his reputation. First, he became a major cancer philanthropist, raising some $75 million for research and appearing regularly on such TV programs as Larry King Live and The Charlie Rose Show to push efforts to cure prostate cancer. And since 1996, he’s moved back into business in a big way, founding Knowledge Universe (KU), a new venture that he hopes to build into a huge presence in the $800 billion educational-services industry. Together, his twin pursuits have given Milken a new platform from which, on his own terms, he is once again a player. To have risen so high, to have crashed so hard, and then, to just pick up the pieces and move on. That could not have been easy. I can’t help but wonder what the past 10 years of this man’s life have really been like. How has that experience changed him? What’s it like to be Mike Milken today? As I finally come face-to-face with this legend of the 1980s, he reminds me of no one so much as Richard Nixon and his own relentless quest for rehabilitation. Is Milken, too, driven mainly by the desire to win back his good name? That is certainly a part of it. But it doesn’t take long to realize that, despite all he has been through, Mike Milken seems much the same intense and compulsive guy he always has been, passionately worked up by his ideas. As I watch him move through his daily routine, I notice an almost robotic quality to him. He’s perpetually in motion, and every minute of his day is scheduled. He strikes me as the opposite of an introspective man. At work and at play, he continues to surround himself with the same loyal family members and business associates who’ve stood by him since the 1980s. There is about Milken an air of unreality, a need to rewrite history on much of what he has done. It’s as if to stop long enough to explain his past would prevent him from doing what he clearly loves best: propelling himself into the future at 500 mph. Milken hates to talk about the old days. “It would be so time-consuming to deal with,” he says. “It is better to focus on the future, that is what gives me energy.” It has always been that way with Milken. “Even in prison, he didn’t want to talk about himself,” says a friend and former junk-bond client who phoned Milken during his time in prison. “He would say, ‘Let’s talk about something more pleasant, something constructive.'” These days, that “something constructive” is Milken’s dual quest to find a cure for his own prostate cancer and to build his education company. “In the 1980s, I had one huge idea. Now, I have two huge ideas,” Milken pronounces. Just as he once trained all his forces on creating and controlling the then $200 billion junk-bond market, Milken has refocused his efforts, turning his high-energy laser beam on those tasks. Cancer doesn’t seem to have slowed him. The man works–really works–15 hours a day, seven days a week. He seems almost too focused, lacking the little flaws and weaknesses that make the rest of us fallible, susceptible to distraction, and in a word, human. He doesn’t touch coffee, alcohol, or even soda. He never swears. His jokes are always hopelessly wholesome and corny. Even as a kid, he never rebelled. When he married his wife, Lori, at the age of 22 in 1968, the pair had been dating since the ninth grade. Some of his friends and those who’ve worked closely with Milken say his drive for perfection is both inspiring and maddening. “In so many ways, he is who you hope your kids become. He is diligent, loyal, a great listener, grounded, persistent, optimistic, generous to a fault,” says Joseph Costello, who was hired by Milken in 1997 to run KU, only to quit months later after a disagreement over strategy. “But something is missing. He never seems completely relaxed. There is always a point, a purpose. If he could just lose it, let go, he would be easier to relate to.”
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How would you rate Milken on self-monitoring? Explain your reasoning.
On scales of low = 1 to high = 10, how would you score Milken on each of the Big Five personality dimensions? How does the personality profile you have constructed for Milken explain his incredible comeback after prison and cancer?
Does Milken have an internal or external locus of control, and has this tendency helped or hindered him?
How would you rate Milken’s emotional intelligence? Explain.
