The Passion that was Michael Jackson : The Artist Who Was the Art

My earliest memory of Michael Jackson is of me and two of my best friends during my primary and high school days lying on the cold marble floor of my friend, Hari’s house and watching MJ’s music videos on VCR. Between the three of us little musketeers, Hari was from a much better to do family and could afford a VCR and later a CD player which he dubbed the ‘laser player’.On that marble floor, we were introduced to the sounds of Lionel Ritchie, Sheena Easton, Billy Joel, The Police and Prince. But among these, Michael Jackson was and still is my favaurite. We would have watched MJ moonwalking and sliding effortlessly from one ‘light box’ to another (if you are an MJ fan, you will know which video I am talking about!) a hundred times. We would squeal with glee each time MJ makes one of his famous moves. I remember my school mates imitating him in every school concert. During MJ’s 1996 concert in KL (the ONLY concert that I have paid to attend), I even saw some pretty impressive MJ impresarios and I knew that they must have spent countless hours to ‘perfect’ those moves and they did that because MJ was worth the time and effort. In later years I remember debating vehemently that Dirty Diana was not about Princess Di as MJ adored her and you could see that in the way he treated her when they met. And, to this day I believe that his Invincible album would have been a chart topper if it was from any other singer. We just expected too much of him. We threw this collective subconscious challenge at him : Go do better than Thriller if you can!”….Go sift through another 700 songs and make an album that can out sell Thriller!”. The man died trying. You see, MJ had this passion and what he wanted was to produce albums that have winning songs....ALL of them. No fillers for one or two hit songs. He wanted all of his songs to be hits!

There is no other entertainer on the face of this earth who can make every single mundane movement of the body so sublime and stylish and so full of emotion that you tend to wonder if he is sending a message or some deep meaning that we dense souls just don't get it. There will never be another one who can move his fingers so exquisitely and so much infused with energy and passion. There will not be another album so culturally significant that the Library of Congress will be moved to preserve it at it did with the magnificently arranged and delivered Thriller (kudos to Quincy Jones for allowing MJ to go with his heart as otherwise we would not have had the pleasure of that hauntingly beautiful base guitar in Billy Jean). There will not be another song that captures the essence of an age as deeply as the Earth Song and there will never ever be a rhythm as hypnotic as Billy Jean. And, there will never be a talent such as his that will be so devastatingly beautiful and imbued with such character. There will also not be another so paradoxically tortured soul : Man- child, black-white, male-female, sexy-sexless.

And he is now gone forever. His death moved me enough to bring me back to my blog. The universe has a strange way of colliding and send meanings to you when you least expect it and this morning it happened to me. I have been thinking and reflecting on MJ and his body of work since I first heard of his death last Friday while still enjoying my breakfast at the Conrad Hotel in Hong Kong. I rushed back to my hotel room to switch on the CNN and there it was. MJ was dead! On my flight back and over the weekend, I reached back into the recesses of my memories to pay homage to a man who changed culture, broke racial barriers, defied the odds and finally became a prisoner of his own fame and talent. Despite the controversies, I have been a fan of MJ as I am a fan of Maradona or Dustin Hoffman or the late Pramoedya Ananta Toer because his passion for his work reverberates with me. I love these people who have made a difference in our lives through their passion for what they do and I have often written about it and only last Wednesday, I spoke about being passionate in leading and managing to a group of 19 managers/directors.

The truth is… I have been berating my self these last couple of weeks for not updating my blog. Though many ideas and thoughts have come to me, I have just been too busy to put them into coherent thoughts and then into writing which gives me the most pleasure. Then, this morning I was at the Starbucks near my office way before the usual morning crowd came in for their caffeine fix, and my thoughts once again drifted to MJ. I was just nostalgic and Louis Armstrong playing in the background was a perfect tonic for the soul. I was flipping through the pages of NST while thinking of my collection of MJ’s albums in cassette format which seemed to have been faded by age and use, when I came upon an article written by Mr. Ahmad Izham Omar, CEO of 8TV who shared his thoughts about how one needs to do everything with his entire heart and soul and that ‘where ever you go, go with all your heart”. MJ did everything in his music with all his heart.

That's when I realized that I need to get back to my writing. Writing has always given me the greatest pleasure but work and the usual time-stealers that I sometimes find incapable of battling have made me so tired and weary that I have done less and less of the one thing that keeps me the most grounded. I have used extremely trivial excuses to not do what I am most passionate about. I have also realized something else about my self. I write to become creative although I have always thought that I write when I am feeling creative. I think, it is work that you do when you feel creative. But if you do something for its own sake…then it’s your passion.

So, when we are managing others – it can either be our work or it can be our passion. The difference will be obvious to those whom we are leading and managing. And that difference will not be quantifiable yet tangible. In Hong Kong, I know that I had a group of passionate current and future people leaders and I know this through their sheer concentration on the best practices that I was sharing and the probing situational questions that they threw at me.

So here is what I think it will take for you to be a ‘Michael Jackson’ in your managing and leading :

1. Be passionate….show your passion – in everything that you say and do
2. Consider every single interaction as a showpiece to leave a lasting positive and empowering impression
3. Innovate, change and be creative to keep things exciting
4. Break new grounds constantly….and break some more
5. Be humble, show compassion but don't be a weakling on your stage of leadership
6. Your Team is your concert…you are the director and the superstar. Make them a success by you becoming a huge success
7. Reach out to all and show genuine interest in all
8. Collaborate, synergize and take the best that others can offer
9. Have fun; don't loose the innocence of childhood
10. Be inquisitive


Every time you feel tired, reach out to your passion, and that will make the difference. Nothing meaningful have ever been accomplished without passion. You can’t take your team anywhere worthwhile without your passion. You see, passion is contagious and it energizes others. It adds value far beyond what can be measured today. The difference between great managers and average ones is not in the skills or strategies or knowledge - its in the passion.

Rest in peace MJ. You have done more than we could have ever asked from a single gentle soul as yours. ‘This will not be it’ as your music lives in the hearts and minds of those who can recognize the passion of your work.

Thank you. You were the Artist and the Art.