Building, Inventing and Innovating: Positive Attitude Under Stress, Israel's Culture

Israelis "can do attitude" has turned the desert into an almost tropical environment. What many young Israelis take for granted amazes visitors from other places. This creativity and devotion to building carries to many other areas in the Israeli economy. / © 2010

How do you describe a country's personality? How do you explain to someone how things are done in a different culture? or business environment? Israelis have been doing things their own way for such a long time, it is hard to most people to understand a unique and very different culture. Israelis are not at all like their American Jewish cousins, also they are not like their European Ashkenazi ancestors and certainly not like the Arabs surrounding cultures (and the Arab countries from where the Israeli Sephradi population came from.)

Israeli culture of creating is unique and can help others in becoming more creative, productive and constructive. Israelis have an 120 year record of building, inventing and innovating intensely. That attitude of doing the "hard-fun work" or what here is considered the "important work" gives Israelis pride and confidence. Some say over-confidence (or false bravado) at extreme cases. Israelis are known to be overly optimistic about their abilities. For most Israelis culture and history also gives a sense of reality and a "can do" attitude. I think this is the most crucial difference between Israeli and people in other countries. In some countries, like the US after World War II this was the case. American won the biggest world war so now Americans felt like they could do anything. For a generation, this attitude propelled the American economy and society which became the envy of the world. Attitudes are developed in Israelis as a cultural element from early age. It makes sense when you are here and you see and experience how Israelis think and work. It is very strange for foreigners with different cultural attributes to understand (or even believe) Israelis describe this attitude. A combination of historical success and strong personality gives the country a truly unique behavior.

A related point is how Israelis bounce back after a low. Recoveries here are slow but steady and well thought out. Israelis suffered tremendously after the second Lebanon war. All of northern Israel was under attack. Israel's defense forces (IDF) could not beat Nasrallah and Hezbollah even with massive bombing and ground offensive, one third of the country was under siege. What the international media did not show was hundreds of fires specially in forests (hand planted over a century.) Some families afraid for their children moved to tent camps in the central region, even in Tel Aviv in front of the central train station. Then the war ended with no real resolution, the IDF withdrew without a commitment from Nasrallah to stop the shelling in the future. The whole war started over the capture of two soldiers, it turned out that they were deal all along. What did Israelis do? Did they go into a state of anger or depression? Not at all!

Israeli workers and managers actually worked through the whole war. At many Israeli companies managers vowed not to miss any days due to the shelling. After the war the mood was dark but everyone started slowly to feel better. Government officials were blamed for mistakes in decisions and there was a public debate on who to throw out. The defense minister and the commander in chief (in Israel it is the highest ranking officer not the president or prime minister) were eventually ousted. But Israeli workers and managers did not let the war push them down. Factories continue to work (Intel's semiconductor factory promised their US headquarters not to miss one day of production,) offices stayed open, transportation continues except for trains running to the northern most city of Afula, government offices ran as usual. While the world was holding it's breath, Israel continued to run. How does this relate to innovation and building? It shows that even the threat of war does not serve as an excuse to stop working and to keep a positive attitude. This is specially relevant today where economic and security reasons affect many people's attitude towards being creative and toward doing the "hard-fun work". Here there are no reasons to feel down and depressed. Even during war and shelling, it is just an excuse not to do great things.