“The entire community of Organization Development academics and practitioners in Israel stood on the shoulders of Itamar, small as he was in stature”. That is what I wanted to say as he was laid to rest today in Segula Cemetery.

I also wanted to thank him for all that he contributed to me, personally, before he was laid to rest. But I did that in my heart. As is not my habit- I kept quiet at Segula. The stage to talk was for Gaby, Dafna and Orit, his children.

We were professional and business partners for over 30 years. That is a very long time, considering that we agreed on very little, except of course how to practice OD.

As an ex- Argentinian, being on time was not critical for him; as an ex-Canadian it was (and is) very important for me. Itamar gave top-down complex (and brilliant) explanations cum interpretations. My style was/is far more down to earth and eclectic. Itamar was a brilliant academic, teacher and practitioner; I am a practitioner with no academic pretentions.

When I come to think of it, we also had a lot in common, which perhaps explains the 3 decades of partnership. We were both perfectionists when it comes to OD. We both backed our people when they erred. There was zero competition between us, and no backstabbing. Arguments, yes. Backstabbing, no. Itamar and I, luckily, shared a sense of humour and of the hundreds (and hundreds) of hours we worked together, at least 30% were spent laughing. We both worked very very hard, day and night, to do things “comme il faut”.

Yet-I haven’t yet made the main point. Itamar came to Israel without “connections” and initially without a full control of the language. (Itamar claimed that he spoke all languages in Spanish). Yet within just a few years, he had had an incredible impact on the practice of OD in the military, in civil society, and in academia. His impact on commanders, colleagues, students and clients was so phenomenal that I can do them no justice. He towered over the profession for decades.

Thank you, Itamar, from the very bottom of heart, for everything you gave to our country, the army, the profession and especially to me. I will be forever grateful. And the disagreements? Who can manage a 30 year partnership without disagreements, for heaven sake.

PS

Two Allon-Itamar stories

#1

Itamar-For this insurance policy, I need your date of birth.

Allon-1949

Itamar-Are you sure?

Allon-Are you trying to convince me I was born in another year?

#2

Allon- Itamar, I don’t understand what you have told me, and you have said it three times. Will you stop repeating yourself?

Itamar-I myself am just starting to understand.

What a character has departed from our midst!

Dear Howard was as smart as they come, had a great sense of humour, tough as nails yet humane with a huge soft spot, brilliant strategist, driven by detail, and excelling in managing very talented, extremely diverse and very opinionated people. And of course, he was a brilliant and very successful businessman.

Howard earned the name Chief to be sure.

The “tribe” of which he was “Chief” was diverse as diverse as diverse can be. Every language under the sun was spoken in his organization.  As a matter of fact, the UN was homogenous as compared to the Chief’s tribe. Howard was a master of getting the most of very smart people from all over the globe all focused on being successful.

Yes he was not perfect. Who is? Yet even when he was annoying, he was almost always correct. When we first met, I thought that his brilliance was his saving grace. But it wasn’t. He was a fine human being.

Our relationship developed slowly. In the first meeting, Howard told me that ‘all the people who work for me think that they can do my job better than I can. And be aware, Shevat, they probably believe that they can do your fucking job better than you. So good luck  to you, and bring me some results.”

We met regularly for updates; twice a month for several years, I would arrive from Israel on Mondays or Wednesdays at 5.30 AM, and prepare myself for our 09.00 AM meeting which rarely started on time. If I remember, it never started on time. Howard generally regarded time as an unlimited resource.

I came very well prepared, and I could feel that he appreciated my work. Yet he was tough and very demanding. Yet as time went on, Howard gave me more and more work; that was his way of showing appreciation.

Until the fire alarm. We were in a building in Boston and a fire alarm sounded. Everyone ran out. Howard was not feeling well and his breathing was labourious. I stayed with him and we descended together slowly ten minutes after the alarm sounded. Just as we went outside, everyone who had previously descended  was already filing back into the building. “Christ Allon, you could have fucking died because of me”.  (Yes, Howard did remind me of my Dad in the way he spoke). That was the first time our relationship ventured beyond consultant-client.

The second change came in our relationship came during supper in Boston. I mentioned that my wife had died of melanoma, and he mentioned that he had battled melanoma as a young boy, “and it sure scared the shit out of my parents. Even my doctor is surprised every time he sees that I’m still alive. Now let’s get down to business.” We got back to business, but from then on, we had bonded differently.

As time went on and the issues we were working on improved, he backed my worked even during budget cuts and provided an enormous umbrella against corporate cuts.

And we remained friends, discussing things that all friends discuss. He was a wise friend, often commenting on both of my blogs, both praising and criticizing. His comments were pure gold. He did not use classy language so his ideas were crystal clear and to the point. Always.

Howard honed my skills as a consultant, and by dint of our hard work, I had a satisfied client and later, a very very very smart friend.

Farewell, Chief. I will miss you. Very much.

שיהיה זכרו ברוך.

It is common for organizations to commission consulting work to “improve customer service”.

Far too often, the expectation is that the consulting work will lessen the turnover of customer service agents, improve the average customer satisfaction rating on some digital survey or provide a positive “customer experience”, whatever the fuck that means.

Consultants would be best to manage clients’ expectations about what needs to be done to improve customer service.

Generally, the answer lies in improving the product to lessen the number of calls to customer service, empowering customer service to compensate clients who have been wronged, more computing power, and of course more dedicated resources from Product Development (Engineering) to address/repair features that are unstable/half cooked.

In other words, consulting Customer Service is all about empowerment vis a vis their very  own organizations, and far less about creating a “wow” experience with the client.

Now this clearly is common sense but common sense is not so common. And, since so much of customer service is “lip service” in an ever cruel digital world, consulting work commissioned for customer service units is often “perfuming the pig“+-as opposed to a genuine effort to make service better.

+Thanks Sherry for introducing  me that term

“Working from home” is losing ground as an alternative to on-site presence; it is not hard to understand why. Really, it’s not rocket science. But common sense is not so common-so I will point out the reasons that I think that this is happening.

1. Working from home deprives management of the outer accoutrements of power. Their larger office, parking spot, and various gadgets all disappear. Everything that visually separates them from the mob is wiped out by working from home. Thus, management has seized the moment (which moment exactly I will explain soon) and returned to the status quo ante covid. That is the number one reason for the demise of WFH, and is far more salient than any other reason.
2. The context of working from home post covid (I stress, post covid) must be seen as part of “almost everything goes” which characterized so many quirks, such as language policing, DEI on steroids, parenting-uber-alles, work life balance (not answering emails on the weekend, eg). It appears that the “everything goes” pendulum swing is now swinging the other way, as the populace cringes from so many perceived excesses.
3. The technology often stinks. In my experience, at least ten minutes of every hour is spent on connecting people up to the network, reconnecting people, “can you speak up”, and muffled mumbling.
4. Working from home destroys and guts the informal networks, so critical to making an organization work more smoothly.
5. WFH is perceived as empowering staff to make choices which should, according to senior management, be made by employers. An example being, “sorry, my baby is crying; I need to drop off this call”.

Do you remember fountain pens with ink? Do you remember buying a movie ticket from an actual person at the theatre? Do you remember calling a service centre and not being molested by a voice menu as long as my leg (I’m tall)? Well that is where working from home is going.

Caduc. Those were the days.

NB 1. I like WFH. I also like vanilla ice cream. But I don’t want a gut. I like sunbathing, but I had BCC and in situ (thank heavens) melanoma. I love bitter chocolate. See gut issue above. I love to booze-but I can’t due to medications I take. Same same with WFH. It will continue to exist; it will not wither away. But it’s on the way down. Like smoking, or taking pervitin.

NB 2. I predicted this in 2020.

John to consultant: My boss Alexander told me that I would get a two month bonus by Jan 13. Yesterday at lunch, I reminded him, and he said, “I never promised you anything like that.”

Does Alexander have a bad memory?

Ira (who works with John but in another department) to consultant: Alexander makes up decisions ex post facto, so you can’t win with him. But I’m 65, with two years to go till my pension, so fuck it. What do I care!

Perhaps Alexander DOES have a poor memory? But maybe not. We find themselves in a quandary in such situations.

What is the best approach to take when confronted with stories like those told about CEO Alexander? There are 3 approaches which I want to map out.

• Manipulation

Managers do use selective memory loss as a tool to change decisions, wiggle themselves out of an uncomfortable situation, or de-commit from something they promised because reality changed. So, let’s be real – this all could be part of CEO Alexander’s strategy when the going gets rough. Look for that pattern: that’s always my default action plan. In my 45 years of experience, I would estimate that “poor memory” is very very often best explained (away) as a manipulation of some sort.

• Organizational memory is poor

At times, different people remember different things, especially when ambiguous terms (“at the beginning of next year”) or sensitive promises to clients (“it should be fully functional by the spring”). If key decisions are not documented via a plan of record, or a meeting summary, or a text message, then it is organizational memory that needs to be the focus. However, often an organization will push back on too much decision clarity as it is seen as backing oneself into a corner.

• Oh shit, it IS memory loss

In the unfortunate case that there is lots of smoke, and perhaps you yourself has encountered the memory eclipse, the first step is to find out if the client is going through a stressful rough patch. If so, discuss the stress with the client. If the memory loss is not stress related, my suggestion is to wait until you and the client remember things differently, on several occasions, and then-discuss the option of seeing the relevant professional health provider.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/it54wi0maaxsby0g8t480/Episode-3-01-07-25-Customers-v-stock-holders.mp3?rlkey=xxsew826g37bfjn6bysgj2p81&st=jnjako8d&dl=0

Or-why customer service has gone down the toilet….and how HR fiddles as Rome burns. Veteran Canadian journalist Howard Schwartz, shown below,  interviews me.

Ann has been hired as an OD consultant to facilitate a process revising “the strategy, the supporting strategy and the critical success factors of a large cosmetics, family owned firm active in 16 countries. The process will take place over one year, with meetings in Paris, Rome, Goa and Tel Aviv. Ann reports to the board, who has instructed Ann to “add a “wow” factor. A market dip 6 months into the project stops the process cold. The chairman wrote Ann that “we hope to restart in two years”. The outcome of the process until it was stopped is a 18 word mission statement.

Harold has been asked to work with a mortgage companies’ call centre due to “employee churn” of 50% a month. Harold chose to “shadow” the shift leaders and give them ongoing feedback about their people skills. However, the shift leaders themselves left and the new shift leaders hired in their place had, as per the HR manager, great people skills. Harold’s project ended.

The “time frame focus” of organization development efforts varies between clients and practitioners; each time frame focus may be legitimate but some foci (plural of focus) are better than others.

There are those who focus on a rather long term which entails working on sustainability, vision and other elements that will (or will not) impact the organization is a few years. Clients and consultants who choose to do OD in this fashion are often well off or government funded, multi layered, and have plenty of people in “staff” positions who garner power by managing these efforts.

In my experience, these projects are either effective, or they are not. Often the output consists of statements/declarations, ppt presentations, training and are subsequently translated into branding efforts.

At the other extreme to the long-term focus, there are short term OD efforts which help cope with on-going operational issues, such as better coordination between pre-sales, sales and marketing. These efforts include team building efforts, facilitated meetings and 1:1 consultation.

These types of efforts are successful in the short run by compensating for flaws in the skills of management, and/or serve as a counterbalance to internal political pathologies. Often when these interventions cease, the status quo ante reappears.

In the centre, between the operational short-term and the long-term focus is the type of OD that I find myself doing for the many decades (4) that I have been in practice.

To explain the focus, I will use an automobile-related metaphor. In daylight, we do not need headlights.  Yet, at night we need to use our headlights, and at times, the bright lights. However, we don’t have lights that are, let’s say, twice or thrice as bright as our bright lights. Using another metaphor-neither tactical not strategic-but rather mid range…beyond tactics and less than strategy.

The OD interventions focused on this time frame include creating more scalability via minor tweaks in organizational design, introduction of new positions, revamping onboarding, and improving enabling small changes which will, eventually enable bigger changes.

Sadly, there is too little effort to train OD practitioners about the time frame goal-post that they should be aiming at with their clients. Too much focus is given to OD trends and fashions, outdated values, and crying about the past.

OD practitioners who adopt this approach will never find themselves short of work, nor getting booted out when budgets get cut “because we cannot afford fluff and/or we can do without you”.

1. A company that installs its products before it develops them has approached you to in order to understand how OD can support their business. What are the major issues you want to emphasize in your 15 minute introductory meeting?
2. A US based company acquired a development centre in a country in which  the culture shows respect towards elder people and women are generally in junior administrative roles. The boss of the acquired site will be a 29 year old Canadian female with a PhD from a leading university, who will manage the site remotely from Vancouver. She (the boss) has asked to meet with you for “cultural tips”.
3. A Boston based company is about to launch an “anti-mansplaining” campaign in all 12 countries  (including Japan and Malaysia) in which the company  operates. The Human Resources Board Committee of the Board wants an OD consultant to provide a sanity check on the idea. Your approach?
4. Frank manages a group of chemists and physicists PhDs who have a very poor level of coordination. Frank has decided that “working from home” is banned starting March 2025. The board has mandated that Frank implement his plan with an OD consultant. Your approach?

I don’t remember what I did with the 2 huge posters I that used to hang in my room in Ville St-Laurent: Mao Tse-tung, and an Israeli fisherman throwing his net onto the Sea of Galilee.

To be honest, I cannot even remember if I took them down. I do know that I left behind my beloved Phillips tape recorder which I had received from my grandmother as well as all my clothes save what I had put in a very small duffle bag, along with a few other items. The crate I was allotted was all used to store my books. The crate would arrive 3 months after I did.

Nor do I remember the days before I left. That probably explained what motivated me to leave in the first place.

I do remember however that I just could not wait to go. The drastic move would make me a creature of habit for the rest of my life-at least in the small things of life-like what time I eat, or what I eat.

Dad took me to the Orange Julip on the way to the airport. I ate a triple cheeseburger, poutine and a cherry coke. Dad told me that triple cheeseburgers “are going to be a thing of the past”. In retrospect. I just cannot imagine the pain he felt as his first-born son left home forever. Dad knew I would never return.

No one else really believed that I’d be away for a long time, albeit my declarations.

I met Franky on the Montreal-Idlewild leg of the trip, and he said, “ya ya-see you in a few months”. Franky had been a tutorial lead (professors assistant) in the honours seminar in the” Sociology of Ethnicity”. Albeit the huge amount of ethnic groups Franky could have discussed in class, he focused on the Italians and the Jews-especially the languages they chose to speak in Quebec.

I do remember landing in Israel at Lod Airport. The heat was overpowering. When I arrived in Tiberias a few weeks later for total Hebrew immersion, I thought that the heat would kill me, literally. We studied from 06.30 AM till noon; then from 16.00 till 19.00. Evening studies were often marked with bombings near the border near Kibbutz Ashdod Yaakov, close to my language school Ohalo, very near Tiberias.

I learnt more than Hebrew from Ilanit.

Three years fast forward. It’s 3.00 AM and rain is pouring down on our squadron as we patrol the Jordanian border near Ashdod Yaakov. Rain whips me hard and fierce, fogging the green night-vision glasses I am wearing. My patrol partner is Avi, who himself emigrated from Lebanon. Avi and I speak in Hebrew which we both know well, and French. Luckily, I don’t have my thesis with me, which I had finally completed. I would have had to type it again on my old Hermes typewriter, the one I had also stuffed into my duffle bag when I left Canada for good.

In the 60s, AM and FM radio was  similar to what smartphones are to the present generation: a very close  friend.

My radio was one of my very best friends. I had a small transistor radio that fit in my pocket. It was ultra small, and a very very beloved companion during long walks, sad times and sadder times.

CJAD’s morning man Bill Roberts would accompany me the start of every school day, be it getting dressed or eating my peanut butter and jelly toast. At 8.20, “skedaddle”, as uttered in Bill’s unique way meant-off I go into the freezing cold, prodding my way to Sir Winston, often picking up Miller on the way. CJAD was not always the most popular station, but very few people I know did not listen to Bill Roberts.

Gord Sinclair from CFCF was another one of my favourites. He had a perfect voice which had I been blessed with, and had I stayed in Quebec, may have landed me in radio. Eventually Gord purchased CFOX, a country music station. True, French Canadians love country music, but not only French Canadians.  I’m a Jewish Canadian by birth, who was addicted to CFOX. “Whether you’re at home or in your car, country music’s never far, just turn your dial and let it stay-on C_F_O_X.”

Paul Reid, again CJAD, used to read poetry between songs. I used to write down the names of the poems and try to find them at the Ville St Laurent library, and learn them par coeur, by heart. Whenever I think about Montreal, French creeps in. Nowadays, no one would listen to Reid, and that says a lot, not about Reid but about listening to radio nowadays.

At night, starting at about 10pm, I would look stand with my transistor near the window looking for WWVA in Wheeling West Virginia and WKBW in Buffalo. The former featured songs from the Grand Old Opre and the latter featured Joey Reynolds, the greatest radio announcer on the face of the planet. Reynolds must have laboured hours on each show. He played about 6 characters all at once. I was hooked on WKBW although the static to clear content was NOT in my favour.

I was upset when Dad told me that HK Bassior’s first name is Hank. HK was the all-night man; his program “Milkman’s Matinee” featured a corner called “Stump your Neighbour” during which people would quiz one another with silly questions, such as “How long was 100 Years War” or “How do you say in French “cote des neiges”. Dad knew HK’s father; he was the CFO of Beth El, the synagogue Dad belonged to, but rarely frequented. “Stand by for HK Bassior, and his Milkman’s Matinee”.

Dave Boxer is undoubtedly the best-known DJ ever to work in Montreal radio. I used to go to les centres d’achats (malls) from which he broadcast to watch him in action. His popularity among music lovers was simply out of the world, way before branding existed. Boxer understood that the 60’s was all about music. And his choice of music was outstanding. When he talked, he had planned what he wanted to say-and people listened. Especially teen agers!

In Israel, my romance with radio continued-707 with Alex Ansky and Tramp with Dori Ben Zeev. I knew Dori very well, and when Hadassah died, he played a super sad song about tears falling from the sky. Hadassah worked at Kol Israel as an editor of the “Literary Corner”. She was a beautiful woman but had a surprisingly deep radiophonic voice. She was my wife.

Like many things in my life, so much has changed. I have my 400 song Spotify list which I listen to most of the time. I am no longer interested in new music that comes out. I prefer 60’s, with no yak yak. Paul, Bill, HK, Dave-all belong to  the past. I guess that so do I.