Daniel Lubetzky

Some comments from a conversation I had today – over the phone – with a few colleagues in Gaza:

People curse the day they elected Hamas into power.  If elections were held today, they would be routed out.

It’s taking me an hour to connect on the internet.  I am sure they are monitoring everything we do online, every email we send, and probably this phone conversation.  On the streets they stop every car and rough people up for no reason.  It is becoming the Taliban.

Hamas promised that gas would go down – 20 shekel per canister.  But they are selling at 100 shekel per canister, and even at that price you cannot find any.

Hamas cannot change. They are driven by their ideology, and the most ideological extremists are now in control.  They have shown that they don’t care about the welfare of the Palestinian people, but about imposing their customs and their force upon the population.  They have been exposed.  People are fed up.  They won’t stand it much longer.

I am not sure how much of the above is wishful thinking vs. solid analysis, but it is clear people are suffering and disenchanted with the governance.

A Palestinian truck packed with 4 tons of explosives rammed into the Israel-Gaza border crossing and caused an explosion that was heard 12 miles deep into Gaza and out to Israel.  By miracle or defensive design, the bomber was the only immediate casualty as the crossing includes a long tunnel that acts as a buffer (see last picture of this post).

(this picture is of a getaway car that was destroyed by an IDF missile; no pictures were allowed to be taken at the checkpoint/crossing)

Given the war with Hamas in Gaza, I should not be surprised. 

But I was sobered up.  Darya Shaikh, our US Executive Director, and I were planning to be exactly where the explosion occurred the following day to meet Ezz and Mowaffaq, Palestinian Executive Directors of OneVoice Gaza.  They had not been able to get a permit to join our Board meeting, so we were going to meet at the Erez crossing to bring them up to date.  I have not gone back inside Gaza since the Hamas coup 11 months ago, but we had received permits to go through the Israeli checkpoint and meet at the end of the tunnel with Ezz and Mowaffaq.

This is the tunnel between Erez/Israel and the Gaza entrance, which was targeted by the Palestinian terrorist, apparently from Islamic Jihad, a 22 year old recruited into a suicide mission.

The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reports that the announcement about Turkish-mediated negotiations between Syria and Israel has ruffled the Iranian regime’s feathers.

U.S. pleased, Iran unpleased with Syria-Israel talks
[Read more →]

The astronomical rise in plastic bottle consumption must be giving every thoughtful person some pause.  Fox News, which nobody would confuse as a bastion of progressive causes, has been earnestly tackling this issue, with reporters visibly concerned – as citizens who think about the environmental hazards that come with such wasteful production. 

Think about it: We are manufacturing a whole plastic container that will take well over 500 years to decompose (if at all), for just one fleeting serving of water that could be consumed from a faucet, a glass, or a carry-on container without creating that waste.

Bottled water is extremely convenient, so it won’t die all too soon.  But it should become more of a social stigma as the landfills fill up.  And eventually other solutions will help decrease over-consumption of these bottles.

Barry Rubin writes a scary article about the implications of the Doha Accords, and the capitulation on Lebanon’s future made on May 21st to Hezbollah, and by extension to Iran and Syria.  The capitulation came not only from the Sunni Arab world but also from France, which  Rubin notes, similarly ceded Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany.  Like Lebanon now, the Czechs had hoped to rely on France’s help.  Another culprit is the UN, which blessed this agreement even though it contradicts prior UN resolutions requiring Hezbollah to disarm.  Many more parallels to appeasement of Hitler and Winston Churchill’s observations at the time are stark.  I hope Rubin is wrong about the situation, but I am afraid (as indicated earlier) that the writing is on the wall.

[Read more →]

Related to and independent of the prior posting, I’ve noticed that letting someone go in an NGO (when that is the right and necessary path) is much harder for Executive Directors than it is for CEOs of a company.  Why is this?

The most immediate reason may have to do with the culture and mission of public service that NGOs have.  Organizations want to do nice things.  Letting a person go can be done in a nice way, but it is not a nice or pleasant thing to do.

But I think this also is harder on Executive Directors because there is less inherent incentive to control costs – as the entity is not trying to maximize profits, but to maximize impact.  Executive Directors are not going to get paid more for saving the organization funds.  The money saved is not going to their pockets – and should not (or it could create perverse counter-incentives).  So why should they take the painful step of removing someone they may personally like and consider a peer or friend, even if that person may no longer be optimally serving the needs of the organization? "Optimally" is the key word here, because I doubt many Executive Directors are incompetent and irresponsible enough to not take steps that are patently warranted – i.e., when the person is just truly unsuitable for a job.  But gray areas may prompt far less managerial rigor.

You can then fast-forward and understand how, 10 and 20 years later, you end up with lethargic institutions with under-performing employees whose tasks or missions may no longer be societal priorities, but who scramble by with a sense of passive entitlement.

This is not only not good for society or for the bloated and unproductive organizations, but it is also not good for the employees whose professional growth has been stilted.

Unless they are running a program whose very objective is to generate job opportunities (with mediocre jobs and opportunities if that is the best they can achieve), heads of NGOs (and those who report to them) have a responsibility to remember they are not employment agencies, and they have a fiduciary duty to those who donated the funds to ensure these are used effectively for the stated mission.  With kindness and professionalism, they can achieve a more dynamic work environment that ultimately works best for all.

I hate the term "firing" an employee – along with today’s corporate culture of swift, cold departures that fits and imbues the term.  Today’s prevalent system for leaving a company or organization is unnecessarily inefficient and impersonal.  There are much better ways to approach this.

It is never pleasant letting a team member go, or having a team member leave, whether at a company or organization.  But some smart steps can improve the situation for both parties.

Both at PeaceWorks/KIND and at the PeaceWorks Foundation/OneVoice, I have tried to cultivate a culture where, other than cases of wilful grave misconduct, nobody is just terminated with 2 weeks notice, but rather coached to try to redress shortcomings, often succeeding in doing so. 

By inverse, team members don’t just give notice and leave within 2 weeks. Instead, if a team member feels for personal or professional growth reasons that they need to move on, we have an early and open discussion to explore it, and if it’s the final choice, we work together on a transition plan where they interview, hire, and train their replacements, while they work on their own personal transition, potentially including looking for a job in parallel.  There is an honor code in the PeaceWorks Group that team members do not search for a job under the radar, without first sharing their intent to do so with the CEO or person they report to. 

What is the upside to the team member? First of all, we often reward those who ensure a smooth and responsible transition.  More important to their professional growth, we never hold back on promotions or further areas of responsibility and growth.  The trust enables us to advance them and empower them much faster.  With both parties feeling such responsibility and partnership, it is so much easier to invest in your team without feeling threatened that a sudden departure would leave a hole in the organization.

Of course this is not a perfect system and not every team member abides by it, but in our "family" of 50-60 team members across 3 continents, it has acquired an ethos that colleagues feel strongly and proud about.

This alternative to surreptitious interviews and surprise firings requires a culture that welcomes open communications about team members’ interests and professional growth, where you not only don’t chastise but actually encourage people to openly discuss their career options with the person they report to, with that person acting as a friend and coach thinking about how to grow the team member within the organization if at all possible.

The corollary to the above is that you do a lot more organic growth and hiring from within.  Team members grow much faster, there are more opportunities for advancement, and the company or organization also grows stronger and faster.

M.J. Rosenberg wrote an excellent column on whether it is dangerous or wise for Israel to even negotiate with Syria for a possible peace agreement.

[Read more →]

It is rare that the first few paragraphs of a story in the  New York Times will make one cry.  But this story about the quake catastrophe in China is just such an example of human love and the quest for survival amidst adversity.

A lot of people are worried that 2008 will pass without an agreement among Israelis and Palestinians to define a Palestinian State – and presumably and hopefully start implementing such vision.  I, too, get worried about this, every day.  But listening to Tzipi Livni is quite reassuring.  She genuinely speaks with the OneVoice language and framework and today recommitted herself and the Israeli government to the timeframe and the goals set out in Annapolis.  Most important, she was asked tough but valid questions by Palestinians, and she treated them all with respect, without dismissing any of the human pain inherent in the questions.  I need to check with those who asked the questions, but my impression was that, even though they hate the Israeli government, they recognized a sincerity and goodwill on her part.