Can you imagine in this day an age an entire country population that has never considered or adopted the concept of long range planning within its culture?
I found this notion hard to envision until I visited the country of Israel a while back and became acquainted with its people’s way of life. From the year of the country’s birth in 1947, the Israeli people have never had the luxury of bringing the concept of long range planning into their lives for one unrelenting reason: you can’t plan into future years when no one could be certain that the country would survive for two or three years – never mind fifteen years – down the road. Surrounded by countries dedicated to its demise and terrorized by suicide bombers year in and year out, planning and investing five to ten to fifteen years ahead simply was not an option. Yet, how Israel and its people have succeeded and actually flourished in many ways through the years within this environment offers invaluable lessons that we Americans – now working through our own difficult times be they of a different nature (i.e., a steadily deepening recession) – can learn from. The Israeli Way Born out o
