In this week’s “Corner Office” interview in The New York Times Sunday business section, Romil Bahl, President & CEO of PRGX, a data mining firm, talks about the importance of creating a culture in which everyone feels comfortable sharing ideas. He says: The best idea can come from anyone, and let’s open up our minds to getting thinking from cross-functional areas. That’s something that comes from that notion of equality and diversity ... you have to get good people around you and then make sure they feel comfortable putting their ideas out there, because somewhere in there, there’s a gem. Easier said than done. What happens when that good idea is hard to hear, and even harder to implement? What if the gem challenges your organization’s very foundations, or your assumptions about … Continue Reading
The Adjacent Possible
We often perceive Chanukah as a celebration of the triumph of maintaining what is precious and valued in the face of potential overwhelming, annihilating change. The Macabbees fought the Greeks and the Hellenists - those Jews who were over-eager to abandon their own traditions and adopt new ones - and they triumphed, restoring the Temple to what it was, saving Jewish values and culture. Perhaps, though, we are actually celebrating the opposite of this traditional perspective. Perhaps Chanukah is a commemoration of the fact that we were flexible, malleable, and, yes, impressionable enough, to change, to grow, and, therefore, to survive. Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, in his book The Jewish Way: Living the Jewish Holidays, argues that: Even as they fought the cultural battle, the Maccabees and, later, … Continue Reading
Don’t Drive Into the River
Growing up in Riverdale, N.Y., I attended Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy, known as SAR, a private Jewish modern Orthodox day school. The school is built on a hill overlooking the Hudson River, and, in a manner somewhat similar to step farming, is composed of various levels, on and between which there are no walls. I remember taking a test in eighth grade, and doing my best not to be distracted by the first graders learning the difference in pronunciation between the Hebrew letter vav with a dot on top (they all touched their heads and screamed - oh!) and the letter vav with a dot near its center (they grabbed their tummies and screeched - ooooh!). When my father drove carpool in the morning, and we began the descent down the big hill, the glistening river looming in the near distance, we’d yell … Continue Reading
Pocket-Notes
In an article in a recent The New York Times Magazine entitled “Does Your Language Shape How You Think,” Guy Deutscher writes about a remote Australian aboriginal tongue, the Guugu Yimithirr. He explains that while English speakers use “egocentric coordinates,” using our physical selves as the reference-point to describe the space around us, pointing left, right, in front, and behind us, a Guugu Yimithirr speaker uses “cardinal directions” - fixed geographic directions, north, south, east, and west - even in intimate spaces. “For example,” Deutscher writes, if they want you to move over in the car to make room, they’ll say ‘move a bit to the east.’” He continues, "If you saw a Guugu Yimithirr speaker pointing at himself, you would naturally assume he meant to draw … Continue Reading
Innovating to Preserve Tradition
Lisa Lepson, the Executive Director of the Joshua Venture group, writes in her piece Where Yesterday Meets Tomorrow: "The Judaism that is evolving before our eyes isn’t really new or innovative. In fact, the whole concept of evolution is at the core of Judaism. What our social entrepreneurs are doing is making tradition relevant to us once more, fusing them with contemporary values and bestowing upon them new life. They are leading a vibrant “re-generation” of our cultural and spiritual heritage" The holiday of Shavuot, a pillar in the Pilgrimage Festival series that also includes Passover and Sukkot, illustrates the Jewish dance between innovation and tradition, and embodies the concept of “making tradition relevant to us once more.” The holiday has multiple names, revealing its … Continue Reading
Back to School
The Jewish community has been a-buzz in recent years about its “Innovation Ecosystem,” a term coined by Shawn Landres and Joshua Avedon in their report published in 2008. The report revealed that a substantial number of new Jewish organizations, which think and behave differently from existing, often flailing, Jewish institutions, are cropping up at a rapid pace. These organizations are radically changing the landscape of the Jewish community, meeting its most pressing needs, and providing creative, relevant, and substantive Jewish programming to Jews not participating in pre-existing structures. My question is: Why aren’t more of our creative social entrepreneurs dedicating their energies to re-envisioning, re-imagining, and re-shaping those institutions that, arguably, have the potential … Continue Reading
This Year, Four New Questioners Join the Seder
The holiday of Pesach is an opportunity. It is a time of going through the cupboards and drawers, getting rid of what is no longer necessary, and making space for fresh possibilities. It is a time during which we are reminded to ask ourselves and each other difficult questions, and to create space for the youngest, most wide-eyed, and most curious among us, whether we consider them wise, wicked, simple, or uninvolved, and hear their questions. Not only must we hear their questions, but we must take those questions so seriously that they delay our matza-ball soup and brisket for hours. The Seder famously begins with the Mah Nishtana, the Four Questions, traditionally asked by the youngest participant, and the rest of the long evening involves exploring the answers to these, and other, questions. … Continue Reading
Embracing The Maybe: The Case For Risk-Taking
A recent article in the Business section of the Sunday New York Times, entitled “6 Months, $90,000, and (Maybe) a Great Idea,” described the phenomenon of the “Entrepreneur in Residence”(EIR). In Silicon Valley, there is a growing trend amongst venture capital firms to give business entrepreneurs, many of whom have successfully started and sold companies in the past, the opportunity to use their office space, benefit from a generous stipend, and put on their thinking hats. The hope is that they will come up with the next Google or Facebook. Michael Bauer is one such entrepreneur the article highlights: “While the expectations are high for his ideas, Mr. Bauer maintains that the E.I.R. programs work precisely because failure is allowed in Silicon Valley. ... In other parts of the world, … Continue Reading
VeNahafoch Hu: The Force of Creative Destruction
Purim is a celebration of reversals. The Book of Esther, which is traditionally read twice on the holiday, states in Chapter 9 verse 1: "Now in the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, on the thirteenth day of the same, when the king's commandment and his decree drew near to be put in execution, in the day that the enemies of the Jews hoped to have rule over them; whereas it was turned to the contrary, that the Jews had rule over them that hated them." This notion, of things being turned on their heads, called “venahafoch hu” in Hebrew, is at the core of this lively, raucous little holiday. The very purpose of our celebrating is intertwined with this overturning “from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning into a holiday” (Esther 9:22). As Rabbi Irving Greenberg puts it in his essay … Continue Reading
Spinning
It’s that time of year again - the days are shorter and colder, and across cultures people huddle together with family members, and brighten the dark evenings with orbs of light. Chanukah is upon us. We eat latkes and jelly donuts to remember the oil that miraculously lasted in the ancient temple. We light candles each night, increasing light and holiness in the world. We remember the miraculous victory of the few against the many, and celebrate our religious and cultural freedom. And, of course, we play dreidel - and teach our young and tender to gamble. I have a vivid childhood memory of gathering with aunts, uncles, and cousins at my grandfather’s house for Chanukah. He had a jar full of coins, and each family member would line up in size order to take a turn dipping a hand into the jar … Continue Reading
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