Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's (Saturday) statement on redeployment on the Gaza Strip border did not carry any real news, to say the least, except for the fact that Netanyahu noted that the tunneling issue would be handled with genius by geniuses.
By the way, this is the same prime minister who was the first to recognize the genius of the supertanker in the huge fire that caused the Carmel disaster, after the fire burned for many days.
There is something frustrating about the fact that the geniuses always arrive late, after paying a heavy price. After all, it is likely that these geniuses were not born during the fighting in Gaza, so where have they been until now? Why have their suggestions and advice not been heeded for years? Did their genius become wounded during the fighting?
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One can be cynical about the ingenious proposals of the geniuses currently knocking on the doors of the Prime Minister's Office; but the facts are that in this case, Netanyahu is right.
There are ingenious solutions, the question is how open we are to hearing them.
Israel has a rare group of creative people, with brilliant ideas on many subjects. We are a creative people with quite a few geniuses. Our problem is, in attentiveness. In the willingness to listen, to consider carefully, to internalize, and also to execute when necessary.
It's not that elected ministers and/or ministry directors are less creative than those who come up with ideas outside the box. Absolutely not. It's just that in the conduct of government ministries, it doesn't work that way. Every minister enters the ministry with staff members and they are as full of good intentions as a pomegranate.
The big problem is the ego.
The problem is divided into two:
First, after a short time you discover that day-to-day management drains you of everything. Managing an organization, any organization, takes time and a lot of energy. Countless problems and glitches crop up all the time. Many discussions revolve around the current situation. And so you have neither the time nor the energy to deal with strategy at the same time. And this is regardless of your genius and IQ. You are simply busy with day-to-day management.
Second, the deeper you get into the thick of things, the more you find yourself locked into a particular approach to the problem, and the harder it is to think outside the box. That's you and your team.
The more you chew on the same problem over and over again, the less creative you become. The closer you are to the problem, the harder it is to solve it. Take a written document, the closer you hold it to your eye, the harder it is to read. The further away you hold it, the easier it will be.
Let's illustrate this from the world of medicine. In medicine, too, people often ask for a second opinion. Not necessarily because the second doctor is better than the first. Sometimes he is at the same level and sometimes perhaps less. But after a particular doctor has been treating a complex problem for a long time, he often follows a particular treatment path, and has difficulty identifying other paths.
Another doctor sees things from a different, broader perspective than the previous one, if only because he is seeing things for the first time, with additional details that have been added over time.
Our big problem is the ego. The hand-wringing. The lack of support for the other. Because "What does that person understand? What does that person know?" After all, I have countless details that the other person doesn't have. True, you're right, but a combination of the two of you can be a winning combination.
Think outside the box
In fact, the prime minister has such a body. The National Security Council. But over the years, various considerations of honor and internal disputes have prevented this body from providing the most. The Ministry of Defense does not like to send representatives to the council, and if it does, they are junior-ranking officials, and this is what it looks like.
The right thing to do would be to appoint a deputy director-general, or someone at the level of deputy director-general, in every government ministry, whose job would be to think of strategy. To think outside the box, to consult with people who know how to go beyond the book, and to centralize things for the minister in charge. That's how the acts of genius within us will be expressed. Because we have creativity and genius in abundance here in this country; the problem is that they conflict with a lack of paragonism.
So it's true that in a ministry like the Ministry of Defense, there are usually departments, such as operations, ICT, and R&D, and there is the Military Intelligence Department and many more. But it became clear to us that there is not enough strategy. That genius is expressed too little and too late. After dozens of fighters paid with their lives.
With a little more openness and a little less self-inflatedness, things could have looked different. We would all benefit from it, including the ministers.
