The next 50 years for the Jewish people will not be like the last 50 years — that’s fairly obvious. The important question is: What kinds of change will we lock in? 

Systems tend to cycle between being “frozen” or “unfrozen.” A frozen system moves forward in continuous ways, shifting only incrementally based on what came before. An unfrozen system, which is much rarer, presents an opportunity for testing existing assumptions and charting new paths that will define the next “frozen” state of the cycle. 

After the COVID-19 pandemic and Oct. 7, the Jewish community — for better and for painfully worse — is “unfrozen.” In this time of uncertainty and contingency, we have an opportunity to reimagine what might be to better serve us in the new world that is unfolding. 

The talent imperative 

As the present and coming years reveal an uncharted trajectory for the Jewish People, who is mobilizing Jewish communities to adapt to new realities?

Jewish communal professionals are supporting and leading us, as a people, into a future for which there is no playbook. As we look to the Jewish future, there is a crucial area where the Jewish community has an opportunity to innovate: investing in talent. 

For any organization to sustain itself, it needs to function in three markets:

• The product and service market, where an organization meets the needs or desires of their customers or those they serve. For nonprofits, this is the programming and experiences that benefit the target population.
• The capital market, where an organization seeks the funding that empowers its operation and delivery. For nonprofits, this is seeking philanthropic grants, donations and some fee-for-service elements.
• The labor market, where an organization competes to attract, retain and develop the very best people to lead, work and serve within organizations.

The Jewish community has been both adaptive and innovative many times in the past, but those innovations to date have been concentrated mostly in the product/service market (programs) and the capital market (philanthropy). The labor market (people) must be the focus for the next leap forward in Jewish communal innovation. It is the vehicle for driving success in the other two markets. Without developing and upskilling our talent, even the best product or service, empowered by abundant capital, cannot reach its highest level. 

There have been stellar examples of Jewish talent innovation on the national and local levels, from the Wexner Foundation’s fellowships, Schusterman’s ROI Community and the Mandel Institute for Nonprofit Leadership to the Ruskay Institute to Leading Edge. Professional development opportunities for workers at all levels are also available from organizations like JPro (now a part of Leading Edge) and Maoz, and within umbrella contexts like the Jewish Federations of North America, Hillel International, Foundation for Jewish Camp, the JCC Association of North America, Prizmah and many more. These are strong programs and have grown in number and scope over the last decade — but they are not at the level of scale and saturation we need.

To date, the majority of existing talent development interventions have been limited and targeted. What we need is to make world-class talent management a norm in the field and a coordinated effort, so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The audacious brilliance of PJ Library, for example, is that it attempts to reach all Jewish families with young children. We need the same broad-based, relentless and astute approach — and the same level of scale, ingenuity and commitment — for attracting, equipping, retaining and developing talent in the Jewish community.

A mindset shift

To achieve this norm, the Jewish nonprofit sector needs a shift from viewing talent as a cost to talent as an investment. A cost is treated as a negative, something to be minimized; an investment is a positive, something with growth potential that can appreciate in value over time. On a team, people know when they’re being treated like a cost — and they often respond with lower commitment, less initiative, and even growing resentment. But when people feel their organizations value them, invest in them, empower them and develop them, they not only acquire new skills but are more likely to be engaged in their work and motivated to use those skills to do their best work and achieve better results for their organizations, the community and the world. 

The talent “cost” mindset is deeply rooted in the social sector. The Jewish nonprofit sector, like the general nonprofit sector, began not as a profession but as a set of volunteer projects of chesed (acts of lovingkindness) and tzedakah (charitable giving). That history comes with its own mental models, which taught donors to question funds channeled to “overhead” and not direct costs for the community. That framing can easily lead decision-makers and donors astray into becoming pennywise and pound-foolish. As Dan Pallotta pointed out in his popular TED talk, the mindset that seeks to minimize “overhead” costs can lead to underinvestment in talent, ultimately undermining the charity’s effectiveness. After all, the Jewish nonprofit sector is a service industry. In a service industry, the people are the product. 

While this is far from a consensus position, a growing number of Jewish funders and leaders understand that “overhead” — the general operations of an organization — is a vital part of organizational health. But we need a much broader, transformational change — one that recognizes talent as an investment, with the potential for compounding growth. A sustained and abiding effort to invest in talent will require a paradigm shift for the plurality of donors, who must think long-term and more holistically at the Jewish communal ecosystem.

What change looks like

This change begins with Jewish nonprofit funders and organizational leaders and can take many forms. A good salary and benefits are the floor (not the ceiling). Valuing talent can mean retaining a skilled people operations executive; surveying your team to find out what is working and is not as it relates to work experience; initiatives to improve workplace culture; professional development for everyone; management training, especially on effective feedback and coaching; succession planning; streamlining project management and use of technology so that people experience daily progress; and hiring enough people to minimize overwhelm. 

Actions will vary for organizations, but it starts with a shift in mindset. 

Oct. 7 was a tectonic shift for the Jewish world. Now is a time to build the strongest possible Jewish future that can emerge from this crucible. We can achieve that future with a renaissance in talent. 

Jewish organizations are the lifeblood of the Jewish community, and people are the lifeblood of organizations. They need and deserve our investment. How well, or how poorly, we invest in our people now will lay the foundation for the next 50 years of global Jewish communal life.  

Joshua D. Margolis is the James Dinan and Elizabeth Miller Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is also the unit head for the school’s organizational behavior unit and faculty chair of the school’s program for leadership development. 

Gali Cooks is the founding president and CEO of Leading Edge.