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"The Basketball Game" is a graphic novel adaptation of the award-winning National Film Board of Canada animated short of the same name – intended for audiences aged 12 years and up. It's a poignant tale of the power of community as a means to rise above hatred and bigotry. In the end, as is recognized by the kids playing the basketball game, we're all in this together.

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Tag: Finkelstein

On becoming a great leader

On becoming a great leader

Sydney Finkelstein’s most recent book is Superbosses. (photo from Penguin/Random House Canada)

While the target audience for Sydney Finkelstein’s newest book, Superbosses: How Exceptional Bosses Master the Flow of Talent, is businesspeople, it is clear that his ideas carry well into many aspects of life, not just work, and not just business.

Finkelstein, who is a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., is originally from Montreal. He has authored 21 books and more than 80 academic articles.

“Pretty early on, I was interested in why people did what they did and in people who seem to have a lot of power and influence in society,” said Finkelstein. “I was actually very interested, and still am, in not just business leaders, but political leaders.”

Ten years ago, Finkelstein struck a note with his book Why Smart Executives Fail, and he was invited to give keynote speeches and to consult for several companies.

“Everybody pretty much had the same question, which was how to avoid getting into my sequel,” he said. “In the book, I talked about a lot of things you could do to avoid falling into the trap that led to failure but, over time, I came to realize that there was something else more important – the ability to generate and regenerate talent on a continuous basis. That’s the only way to survive and thrive in the long-term.”

After coming to this realization, Finkelstein set out to learn who possessed this ability. This is what led him to learn of those he came to call “superbosses.”

cover - SuperbossesThe Jewish Independent spoke with Finkelstein around the time of his March 8 talk and book signing at Concordia University in Montreal.

“The big difference was the ‘why smart executives fail’ leaders look at people around them – other managers and team members – as people to be used and exploited for their own purposes…. They didn’t really appreciate the fact that the people around them – team members – are actually probably the most important part of what you are doing, because they help you get better.”

Superbosses, on the other hand, wholly prioritized the idea of having great teams and great organizations of great people, understanding that this is the best way to succeed, he said. “The WSEF leaders didn’t understand that. So, that’s a gigantic difference in mindset – thinking about other people and what role they can play.

“Then, when you look at the details of how they run their businesses, there are many, many differences – from how they identify talent, to how they motivate people, how they develop teams, the role of vision and [of] inspiration.”

While most leaders, good or bad, carry with them a certain amount of ego due to their previous endeavors’ successes, Finkelstein said superbosses find ways to put that ego aside.

“This may be the best first thing for people to work on – having a degree of humility about yourself, your own accomplishments and your own personality even,” he said. “Humility doesn’t mean you’re afraid to take on challenges. It means you understand that there are other people who play a role and that you can’t let your ego run away with things.

“By the same token, listening is one of the most important managerial skills I’ve ever seen – the ability to really listen, to understand, not to critique. A lot of people are listening to find a flaw in their argument or to justify a point of view they already have. I’m talking about listening that’s designed to learn something. That’s a tremendous skill and mindset.”

Another important skill Finkelstein advised honing is open-mindedness, ranked highly with its close cousin, curiosity. These are attributes he regularly discusses with boards of directors and management teams.

“You need to have that curiosity about life, about what you’re doing,” he said. “When you have curiosity, you’re asking why a lot. Kids do that, but when we’re older, we don’t do that so much. You learn so much more by doing that.”

Courage is on the list, too – the kind of courage that challenges convention, and the ability to raise your voice when something is not going the way you think it should. “This doesn’t mean you’re going to win the argument or get your way,” said Finkelstein. “It’s about trying to improve the eventual outcome or situation you’re in.

“Many people often remain silent. They just nod their heads. As a result, they’re not engaged in what’s going on. Later, they spend their time complaining and back-biting, rather than being part of the solution. Sometimes, of course, managers or leaders create an environment where, if you challenge, you get punished, so it can be difficult, but I think courage is a critical factor.”

The next item on the list is accountability – recognizing you need to be responsible for your own actions and behavior, as well as instilling a sense of accountability in others.

“I think, by the way, that most people prefer not to be held personally accountable,” said Finkelstein. “I don’t think people should assume people would automatically be accountable. I think people enjoy it when it happens, but they don’t automatically do it. This is particularly relevant in volunteer organizations.

“Being a teacher, a nurturer of talent, is something anyone can do, no matter what their job is,” he continued. “You don’t have to be a famous CEO. You can be an average person doing whatever you’re doing. But, if you spend some time and energy acting to help others get better, often through teaching, sharing and listening … I think that’s a giant differentiator and extremely meaningful in people’s lives. If you have an impact in helping other people, it makes you feel good, too.

“Younger people, earlier in their career, who are ambitious, have high expectations, want to accomplish great things. How do you find people to work with, to work for? I talk a little about that in the book, but I also think that trying to work for someone who is more like a superboss, rather than less like one, is a great way to learn, develop and accelerate your career.”

As the book’s subtitle suggests, Finkelstein sees managing the flow of talent as one of the most important things for superbosses to do, and he segments this aspect into three categories.

“One is finding good people,” he said. “Everyone needs to hire when you’re growing, you need to hire and find people…. That’s the first stage in this flow of talent.

“The second stage, which not everyone engages in, is developing that talent, helping them get better. That’s managing the flow of that talent in a team/organization for a number of years.

“The third stage is managing the flow of talent sometimes even outside your own region, division or role in the company. Very few managers, leaders or bosses think a lot about … how they should manage people out of the organization. I’m talking about good and very good performers.

“The typical assumption among most leaders is to keep those people forever,” he said. “But, those who work for superbosses, people that really enhance their skills or have this vision, they won’t be satisfied with that small piece of pie. They want a bigger role themselves so, in fact, many of them will end up wanting to leave anyways. Managing the flow of talent should also consider this kind of radical or counterintuitive idea – managing people out of the company itself.”

Finkelstein said, “The best people know they will move around, look for those opportunities. If you know that will happen, the questions become how can you take advantage of that, how can you be strategic in that, how can you create a win-win out of that situation?’ That’s what superbosses do. They make a spinout business. One example from the book is the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). The CEO used to create big opportunities for senior executives who were going to leave anyways. He would create a spinout company in a mental health clinic, surgical centre or what have you. That former team member would be given the opportunity to be CEO of that spinout business but, because you’re doing the spinout, you get to participate in a financial sense.”

To see where you sit on the superbosses scale, Finkelstein invites readers to visit superbosses.com and take a 10-12 question quiz.

“The quiz is because people find it interesting to see how they rank,” he said. “The book can help them get better.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Format ImagePosted on March 25, 2016March 24, 2016Author Rebeca KuropatwaCategories BooksTags business, Finkelstein, leadership, superbosses
The real purpose of BDS

The real purpose of BDS

While the three stated goals of the boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) movement are an end to Israel’s “occupation” of “Arab lands occupied in June 1967,” equal rights for Arab Israelis and the right of return for Palestinian refugees (bdsmovement.net), its real aim is the destruction of Israel. As BDS activist Norman Finkelstein succinctly explained in a 2012 video, the ultimate result if the BDS’s three goals are achieved is: “There’s no Israel. That’s what it’s really about.” And, indeed, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas has said, “I will not accept a Jewish state.”

In a Jan. 19, 2016, interview Fatah Central Commitee member Tawfiq Al-Tirawi said: “a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders [i.e. limited to the West Bank and Gaza], with Jerusalem as its capital, is just a phase.” While initially suggesting giving Jews plane tickets to leave the region, he says, “I want to live together with them” in “Palestine, in its historical borders, and we want all the Palestinian refugees [to] return to their country.” Omar Barghouti, a BDS leader who apparently studied at Tel Aviv University for a time, acknowledged during a University of Ottawa talk in 2009, “if the refugees were to return, you cannot have a two-state solution like one Palestinian commentator remarked, you will have a Palestinian state next to a Palestinian state rather than a Palestinian state next to Israel.”

There are many other myths perpetuated by the BDS movement and its supporters, which point to it being antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism, the denial of the right of Jewish people to live in peace and security in their own homeland. Examples follow.

BDS supporters talk about boycotting products from the Israeli “invasion of Palestine.” Jews did not invade nor did they steal the land. Thousands of Jews were already living in the region before the state of Israel was established, and Jews used to call themselves Palestinians. Jews are indigenous to Israel. Jerusalem was the capital of the Jews. Even during the British Mandate, banknotes, coins and stamps had the initials of Eretz Israel (Land of Israel). And the Jews who immigrated to Palestine, as Israel was then called, as a reaction to the ethnic cleansing and genocide they suffered in European and Muslim countries, bought their properties, as returning Jews had been doing for decades.

The Arab Palestinians rejected the United Nations partition of the land (77% for Arab Palestinians and 23% for Jewish Palestinians) in November 1947, and have yet to establish their own state. After the War of Independence, it was not Israel but Jordan and Egypt that occupied illegally Cisjordan (Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank) and Gaza, respectively.

Abbas, Barghouti and others also have accused Israel of genocide. Israel has done no such thing. While its military has been forced to act against terrorism, it has not set out to deliberately wipe out an entire people. The Palestinian population is growing, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. At the same time, 1.7 million Arabs make up 20% of the Israeli population.

The charge of apartheid is another false accusation. As Dr. Kenneth Meshoe, South African politician, president of the African Christian Democratic Party, aptly put it: “Israel apartheid is a lie.” Every Israeli citizen has rights and freedoms. All minorities in Israel, including Arabs, can study in universities, are allowed to become professionals, businesspeople, athletes, work in public sector jobs and hold seats in the Knesset. In the current Parliament, Arab Israelis occupy 14 seats. As an anecdote, the sentence of Israel’s Supreme Court of former prime minister Ehud Olmert was read by an Arab Israeli judge, Justice Salim Joubran. Could that happen in an “apartheid” country?

Another issue BDSers protest is that of Israel’s blockade on Gaza, despite that it is legal, according to international law and the San Remo Manual, given that “relations between Israel and Hamas (which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007) are in the nature of armed conflict.” What would be illegal is if Israel let only some boats seeking to break the blockade pass, as a blockade must apply to every ship unless special permission is given. For more on this, see the article by Prof. Ruth Lapidoth (jcpa.org/article/the-legal-basis-of-israel’s-naval-blockade-of-gaza).

The blockade is needed to prevent terrorist groups from getting more weapons. Hamas’ charter specifically states their will to destroy Israel. More than 15,000 missiles in the past 15 years have been launched from Gaza at innocent Israeli civilians, leaving in their wake deaths, injuries and billions of dollars in damages, in addition to three wars and continued missile and rocket fire at Israel, combined with ongoing incitement against Israel and Jews on Palestinian TV and in schools and training camps.

The security fence – yet another mark against Israel in BDSers’ views – is also a legal method of self-defence. While it is not ideal and while some of it (less than 10%) is an imposing concrete wall as opposed to a wire fence, it reduced terrorist attacks by 90% in its first many years. While terrorist attacks have since increased, there are still fewer than before, and the barrier is a part of the reason for the decline.

As to the BDSers’ demand for the right of return. “The Palestinian demand for the ‘right of return’ is totally unrealistic and would have to be solved by means of financial compensation and resettlement in Arab countries,” Egypt’s then-president Hosni Mubarak noted in 1989. As Barghouti correctly observed, if Israel were to absorb the more than six million Palestinian Arab refugees, Israel as a Jewish and democratic state would disappear.

Refugees, as defined by the UN Relief and Works Agency, are “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict” – which began when Arab countries attacked the newly forming state of Israel – and their descendants. Approximately 750,000 Palestinians fled or left Israel by choice because of that conflict, and more left after the 1967 Six Day War, which was also the result of Arab aggression.

As former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler wrote in a 2014 Times of Israel blog and has spoken and written about elsewhere, there is another aspect that must be considered when speaking of the rights of refugees: “the pain and plight of 850,000 Jews uprooted and displaced from Arab countries – the forced yet ‘forgotten exodus,’ as it has been called – has been expunged and eclipsed from both the Middle East peace and justice agenda for 67 years.”

Another question more people need to ask of BDS supporters is about the lack of protest when Egypt considers building a wall on her border with Gaza, blockades Gaza, destroys neighborhoods adjacent to her border with Gaza to create a buffer zone and destroys tunnels used for arms smuggling, kidnapping of civilians and soldiers and infiltration for attacks.

If BDSers really were concerned about Palestinians, they would be protesting the treatment by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas of their own people, the lack of basic human rights and freedoms that people living in the West Bank and Gaza possess. But they’re not. Instead, they focus their sights on Israel, their ultimate goal its destruction.

Silvana Goldemberg is an award-winning author of more than 20 books and magazines published in Spanish and English throughout the Americas. Originally from Argentina, she is currently based in Richmond.

Format ImagePosted on February 26, 2016February 25, 2016Author Silvana GoldembergCategories WorldTags Abbas, Barghouti, BDS, boycott, Finkelstein, Gaza, terrorism, West Bank
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