82 Days to Go
Start-up Country?
By Sherwin Pomerantz
So the count is now 82 days to the opening of the United Nations General Assembly and the vote on recognizing Palestinian statehood. There does appear to be some chinks developing in the armor, as it were but time will tell what kind of flexibility we will see on both sides.

Meanwhile, my business partner, Ben Dansker with whom I have been associated for 25 years and whose intellect I highly respect, came up with an idea late last week the made me believe he is the best person to write today’s blog so, with gratitude to his commitment to do this, following is his analysis of where we are as a country. Hope you find it of interest.

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Frequently observers of businesses and corporations as well as academics, researchers, and often just plane pundits and kibitzers will point out that the kind of leadership and organizational processes which a company needs at its inception and its early years often differs sharply from the kinds of skills, people, and leadership needed when a company grows and matures. There is nothing particularly new in this, people have been talking and writing about this for decades. In fact most companies, though often only after a major crisis, do make the kinds of changes necessary to adapt to a new, larger, more mature corporate reality and environment.

It may be that countries are the same. That just as a company often needs a different and perhaps more professional leadership and management when it matures than it did when it was trying to invent itself, to develop a product and get it to market, a country too needs a different kind of leadership than it did in the early decades. Israel at its inception, 63 years ago was led and run by much the same kind of culture that characterizes start-ups. Quick decisions, passion and ideology, and that combination of Israeli chutzpa, chafifiut (loosely translated as amateurishness or carelessness),and faith in an idea, a kind of the world be damned, go it alone sort of approach to problems. The leaders of Israel in its early days were daring, risk taking, passionate ideologues, to be sure, but rarely professionals, not so unlike many of the founding fathers of the United States or so many other democracies.

Israel's population has grown more than ten fold in 63 years, orders of magnitude more than any other country in the world. Its economy has grown as well. If Israel was once called a poor country with a lot of rich people, today it is a rich country, though with unfortunately a lot of poor people. Few countries, if any have had to contend with the challenges to its development and even its very existence as has Israel and in spite of manifold problems, it hasn't done badly in many spheres.

Certainly few of those passionate founding fathers would have imagined the extent of its success in absorbing waves of immigration, of building an enviable technology based industry, of being able to boast one of the strongest currencies and economies in the world. And yet, the culture of governance has not changed, the same lack of professionalism, lack of attention to proper governance processes, the same combination of chutzpa and chafifanut, still characterize the way the decisions are made, the way the country is governed, the way Ministers are selected for ideological and political reasons and not because they know anything about their particular Ministry.

The idea that yihe be’seder,(it will be okay), still pervades our thinking in the face of whatever disasters seem to be lurking.

A more professional and process oriented leadership and governance would not solve the tremendous problems facing Israel, but perhaps it would strengthen Israel's ability to deal with them.

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How right he is!!!