Daniel Lubetzky

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.

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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.

Kazakhstan hosted a dinner tonight at the World Economic Forum meeting in Sharm El Sheikh.  The President’s welcome speech was actually very interesting and insightful, but the night was stolen by "horse meat with

attributes."  Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder and all-around great guy) was feasting on it until I regretfully opened my mouth and mentioned what he was eating.  Borat has nothing on this delicacy.

Egypt does indeed have someone firmly at the top.

Here is how my taxi driver related to world leaders and movements, which I found to be quite akin to the heartbeat of the Arab street from conversations over the last few months (and years). 

Mohammad Ali (not the boxer who serves on our board – the other one!) knew I was born in Mexico and a US citizen.  I asked him to rank people or countries, thumbs up or thumbs down.  Here were his rankings on 24 questions from Bush to Ahmadinejad, from Olmert to Nasrallah, from Bin Laden to Anwar Sadat:

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This column by David Brooks is quite provocative and interesting. 

He writes:

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It feels surreal to post this after my prior posting. 

"There is no way to Peace; Peace is the Way."

How does that apply to the situation in Lebanon?  How will we fix our world amidst all these very real power struggles and absolutist ideologies?

How bad is the situation for the Lebanese? This is how bad:

1. Hezbollah’s militia is destabilizing in and of itself – no State in History has ever been able to call itself a stable State if there is a non-State-controlled militia that challenges the authority of the State;
2. For years the UN and the world have indicated that all Lebanese militias had to disarm, in order to allow Lebanon to evolve into a vibrant integrated country; Hezbollah is the only militia that refused to turn in their arms and allow re-integration; even though Israel fully evacuated from Lebanese territory according to the UN and all observers, Hezbollah used its "struggle" against Israel as an excuse not to disarm;
3. Hezbollah continues to smuggle arms from Iran and Syria and send its fighters to train in Iran; it uses the Beirut airport with impunity, and effectively controlled it, along with a separate communications infrastructure;
4. The Siniora Government sought to prevent the continued smuggling of arms by firing the Airport manager that was following Hezbollah’s guidance.  It also sought to ban the separate communications network
5. Hezbollah responded with a semi-coup – attacks against other Lebanese and against Government ministries and employees.
6. The Lebanese Army stood by; now, in which country is it considered normal for the Army to be required to stay "neutral" when a militia initiates attacks against the Government? The Lebanese Army stood by because a) they are too weak against Hezbollah’s passions, training, and weapons; b) they sense in the winds that Hezbollah is becoming stronger and the ruling government is going to fall;
7. The gutsy Hezbollah shiite fighters give their lives to the Movement and will go to the streets or to wherever their admired leader Nasrallah sends them; the Westernized Sunni and Christian moderates on the other side would like to live a fun life and hang out in bars and restaurants, or pursue greater education in the US or Dubai, and they have no undying allegiances to their leaders;
8. Now the "compromise" to prevent further fighting cemented Hezbollah’s control of the airports and their communication network, as well as a change in the government laws; General Suleiman, the head of the Lebanese Army, who was once seen as the only possible candidate for President capable of being responsive to both sides, is increasingly seen as tilting to the Hezbollah side;
9. Iran and Syria have been emboldened by this development and will further invest in their proxy Hezbollah; Saudi Arabia, Egypt, other Arab states and the Unite States, seen as the counterbalance to the Iranians, do not have legitimacy on the street, or the stomach or roadmap to invest themselves into strengthening Lebanese civil society and investing in the people.
10. Hezbollah’s leader Nasrallah has built a mythical reputation as a direct and straightforward and humble leader (it still confounds me how he achieve this, but he did), seen as a model in the Arab world, not just by Shiites loyal to him, but also by Palestinians and Sunnis across the Arab world;
11. The epicenter of struggle is now moving from Iraq to Lebanon; Iraq, even if stabilized, is already Shiite-controlled and significantly influenced by Iran; there is still hope the Iraqi Shiites will demand openess, stability, and progressive policies towards the world, in contrast to the Iranian regime’s apocalyptic totalitarian revolutionary zeal; but they are certainly not going to be any counterweight against Iran; now the threat is that Lebanon will become as oppressive and regressive as Iran;
12. This may be the most alarming development even for Israeli-Palestinian relations; the hope of a two-state agreement between Israel and Palestine is dimmed by the prospects of interference and destabilization from the North and from Iran, via Islamic Jihad and Hamas.  It is now far less likely that Hamas will agree not to to be a spoiler in the negotiations between Abbas and Olmert.  It sees it can become the Hezbollah of Palestine.
13. Lebanon’s dream, and with it the dream of a peaceful Middle East based on harmony, respect, tolerance, economic liberalization, democracy and openess, is in greater jeopardy than it has ever been.