I don’t remember what I did with the 2 huge posters I that used to hang in my room in Ville St-Laurent: Mao Tse-tung, and an Israeli fisherman throwing his net onto the Sea of Galilee.

To be honest, I cannot even remember if I took them down. I do know that I left behind my beloved Phillips tape recorder which I had received from my grandmother as well as all my clothes save what I had put in a very small duffle bag, along with a few other items. The crate I was allotted was all used to store my books. The crate would arrive 3 months after I did.

Nor do I remember the days before I left. That probably explained what motivated me to leave in the first place.

I do remember however that I just could not wait to go. The drastic move would make me a creature of habit for the rest of my life-at least in the small things of life-like what time I eat, or what I eat.

Dad took me to the Orange Julip on the way to the airport. I ate a triple cheeseburger, poutine and a cherry coke. Dad told me that triple cheeseburgers “are going to be a thing of the past”. In retrospect. I just cannot imagine the pain he felt as his first-born son left home forever. Dad knew I would never return.

No one else really believed that I’d be away for a long time, albeit my declarations.

I met Franky on the Montreal-Idlewild leg of the trip, and he said, “ya ya-see you in a few months”. Franky had been a tutorial lead (professors assistant) in the honours seminar in the” Sociology of Ethnicity”. Albeit the huge amount of ethnic groups Franky could have discussed in class, he focused on the Italians and the Jews-especially the languages they chose to speak in Quebec.

I do remember landing in Israel at Lod Airport. The heat was overpowering. When I arrived in Tiberias a few weeks later for total Hebrew immersion, I thought that the heat would kill me, literally. We studied from 06.30 AM till noon; then from 16.00 till 19.00. Evening studies were often marked with bombings near the border near Kibbutz Ashdod Yaakov, close to my language school Ohalo, very near Tiberias.

I learnt more than Hebrew from Ilanit.

Three years fast forward. It’s 3.00 AM and rain is pouring down on our squadron as we patrol the Jordanian border near Ashdod Yaakov. Rain whips me hard and fierce, fogging the green night-vision glasses I am wearing. My patrol partner is Avi, who himself emigrated from Lebanon. Avi and I speak in Hebrew which we both know well, and French. Luckily, I don’t have my thesis with me, which I had finally completed. I would have had to type it again on my old Hermes typewriter, the one I had also stuffed into my duffle bag when I left Canada for good.

In the 60s, AM and FM radio was  similar to what smartphones are to the present generation: a very close  friend.

My radio was one of my very best friends. I had a small transistor radio that fit in my pocket. It was ultra small, and a very very beloved companion during long walks, sad times and sadder times.

CJAD’s morning man Bill Roberts would accompany me the start of every school day, be it getting dressed or eating my peanut butter and jelly toast. At 8.20, “skedaddle”, as uttered in Bill’s unique way meant-off I go into the freezing cold, prodding my way to Sir Winston, often picking up Miller on the way. CJAD was not always the most popular station, but very few people I know did not listen to Bill Roberts.

Gord Sinclair from CFCF was another one of my favourites. He had a perfect voice which had I been blessed with, and had I stayed in Quebec, may have landed me in radio. Eventually Gord purchased CFOX, a country music station. True, French Canadians love country music, but not only French Canadians.  I’m a Jewish Canadian by birth, who was addicted to CFOX. “Whether you’re at home or in your car, country music’s never far, just turn your dial and let it stay-on C_F_O_X.”

Paul Reid, again CJAD, used to read poetry between songs. I used to write down the names of the poems and try to find them at the Ville St Laurent library, and learn them par coeur, by heart. Whenever I think about Montreal, French creeps in. Nowadays, no one would listen to Reid, and that says a lot, not about Reid but about listening to radio nowadays.

At night, starting at about 10pm, I would look stand with my transistor near the window looking for WWVA in Wheeling West Virginia and WKBW in Buffalo. The former featured songs from the Grand Old Opre and the latter featured Joey Reynolds, the greatest radio announcer on the face of the planet. Reynolds must have laboured hours on each show. He played about 6 characters all at once. I was hooked on WKBW although the static to clear content was NOT in my favour.

I was upset when Dad told me that HK Bassior’s first name is Hank. HK was the all-night man; his program “Milkman’s Matinee” featured a corner called “Stump your Neighbour” during which people would quiz one another with silly questions, such as “How long was 100 Years War” or “How do you say in French “cote des neiges”. Dad knew HK’s father; he was the CFO of Beth El, the synagogue Dad belonged to, but rarely frequented. “Stand by for HK Bassior, and his Milkman’s Matinee”.

Dave Boxer is undoubtedly the best-known DJ ever to work in Montreal radio. I used to go to les centres d’achats (malls) from which he broadcast to watch him in action. His popularity among music lovers was simply out of the world, way before branding existed. Boxer understood that the 60’s was all about music. And his choice of music was outstanding. When he talked, he had planned what he wanted to say-and people listened. Especially teen agers!

In Israel, my romance with radio continued-707 with Alex Ansky and Tramp with Dori Ben Zeev. I knew Dori very well, and when Hadassah died, he played a super sad song about tears falling from the sky. Hadassah worked at Kol Israel as an editor of the “Literary Corner”. She was a beautiful woman but had a surprisingly deep radiophonic voice. She was my wife.

Like many things in my life, so much has changed. I have my 400 song Spotify list which I listen to most of the time. I am no longer interested in new music that comes out. I prefer 60’s, with no yak yak. Paul, Bill, HK, Dave-all belong to  the past. I guess that so do I.

Even though waiting is a pain in the ass, it is worthwhile making it into a skill. Veteran Canadian journalist Howard Schwartz interviews an impatient man about waiting.

And if you missed it, listen to veteran Canadian journalist  Howard Schwartz’s first interview with Allon about “one size for all”.

.אין דבר יותר מתסכל עבורי מאשר ההמתנה

אני מאבד את הסבלנות ברמזור אדום. אני מתעצבן בהמתנה למעלית. אני לא אוהב לחכות לחשבון במסעדה. כששתי מכוניות  נמצאות לפניי ליד משאבת דלק, לחץ הדם שלי עולה. וכשמטוס מחכה על !!המסלול  חצי שעה (או יותר) ללא הסבר, אני ממש משתגע

זה לא משהו שאני גאה בו, אבל זה מה שזה אבל לחכות זה לא הצד החזק שלי

ועד לא מזמן לא הבנתי עד כמה חמור חוסר הסבלנות שלי עד שביקרתי באוגנדה. באוגנדה מחכים להכל. לעולם אל תסע לאוגנדה אם אתה לא יכול לחכות

גם אם יש לך ויזה אלקטרונית, זה לא אומר כלום; אתה עדיין צריך 20 דקות המתנה לאדם בשלטונות ההגירה, אז תעשה את החשבון אם אתה מספר חמש בתור

כן, יש 4 מסלולי יציאה לעמדת התשלום החניה בנמל התעופה של אנטבה, אבל שלושה מהם חסומים. היציאה משדה התעופה אורכת 90 דקות

המלון נמצא רק 12 ק”מ מהמלון שלך? לֹא! זה מרחק שעתיים וארבעים דקות

הזמנת כריך בשעה 19.00? השעה רק 20.00

האם אתה רוצה לשלם את החשבון שלך? אנא המתן, ה”מערכת” מושבתת; תחזור בעוד עשרים או ארבעים דקות. צריכים לתפוס מעלית? עלה במדרגות.
.וכן הלאה וכן הלאה

!כמעט הטלתי ביצה מהמתנה

בניגוד אליי, אוגנדים מחכים בסבלנות. כמעט בלתי אפשרי להאמין כמה סבלניים רוב האוגנדים (לא !!!כולם). הם לא ממצמצים עין בפקק של 4 שעות

הם מבינים שמעט מאוד ישתנה אם הם יתעצבנו. זו הגזמה. הם למעשה מבינים ששום דבר לא ישתנה אם הם יתעצבנו; במקרה הטוב, הם יהרסו להם את היום. לפיכך, יש מעט מאוד לחץ באוויר שכן התפיסה היא שזמן הוא משאב בלתי מוגבל

ההמתנה זה לא רק עניין של סבלנות. זו גישה, הלכה למעשה. המתנה אינה בהכרח גישה של כניעה. זוהי קבלה של המציאות, שימור העצמי.

אם יש תשתית לקויה וכל מה שאמור לקחת שעה יכול אורך חמישה ימים, מה זה עוזר לאבד את הסבלנות

כשמוזונגו (ילד או ילדה לבנים) מאבדים סבלנות, ההטיות התרבותיות שלנו צפות אל פני השטח במהירות רבה. המוזונגוס רוצה שדברים יעבדו כמו שצריך; אם הם לא עובדים כמצופה, יש לתקן אותם. עַכשָׁיו. הציפייה הזו מוזרה לאוגנדה. העולם שלהם לא מתנהל כך. כשמשהו לא עובד, יש לשמור על שפיותך. כפי שוולטר קרונקייט נהג לומר, “ככה זה

לפני הטיולים שלי לנמיביה ולאוגנדה, חשבתי ש”פשוט חסרה לי סבלנות”. הניסיון האפריקאי שלי לימד אותי שאני צריך לרכוש את המיומנויות והעמדות התומכות בהמתנה”.

זה לקח עצום לעיכול. ואני רוצה להשתפר הרבה יותר ביכולת ההמתנה. מעולם  לא חשבתי שאי פעם אודה בזה

There is nothing as frustrating for me as the act of waiting.

I lose my patience at a red light. I get upset waiting for an elevator. I do not like waiting for a bill in a restaurant. When two cars are ahead of me at a gas pump, my blood pressure goes up. And when a plane waits on the runway for half an hour (or more) with no explanation, I am fit to be tied.

It is not something I am proud of, but it is what it is but waiting ain’t my forte.

And until recently, I did not understand how severe my lack of patience is.

Then, I visited Uganda. In Uganda, you wait for everything. Never go to Uganda if you cannot wait.

• Even if you have an e-visa, it means nothing; you still need 20 minutes processing per person at immigration, so do the math if you are number five in line.
• Yes, there are 4 exit toll booths at Entebbe airport, but three of them are broken. Exiting the airport takes 90 minutes.
• The hotel is only 12 km from your hotel? No! It’s 2 hours and forty minutes away.
• Did you order a sandwich at 19.00? It’s only 20.30.
• Do you want to pay your bill? Please wait, the “system” is down; come back in twenty or forty minutes. Need to catch an elevator? Take the stairs.

And so on and so forth.

I almost laid an egg from waiting.

As opposed to me, Ugandans wait patiently. It is almost impossible to believe how patient most (not all) Ugandans are. They don’t blink an eye in a 4 hour traffic jam.

They realize that very little will change if they get upset. That’s an exaggeration. They actually realize that nothing will change if they get upset; at best, they will ruin their day. Thus, there is very little stress in the air since the perception is that time is an unlimited resource.

Waiting, I learnt, is not only a matter of patience. It is an attitude, a weltanschauung as it were. Waiting is not an attitude of surrender necessarily. It is acceptance of reality, a preservation of self.

If there is poor infrastructure and everything that should take an hour can take five days, what good does it do to lose your patience?

When a muzungu (white boy or girl) loses patience, our cultural biases float to the surface with great speed. The muzungus want things to work; if they don’t work as expected, they need to be fixed. Now. This expectation is strange to the Ugandan. Their world does not operate that way. When something doesn’t work, suck it up; preserve your sanity. As Walter Cronkite used to say, “that’s the way it is”.

Before my trips to Namibia and Uganda, I thought I “just lacked patience”. My African experience has taught me that I need acquire the skills and attitudes that support “waiting”.

That’s a huge chunk to digest, for me anyway. And I want to get much better at waiting. I never thought I would ever say this.

In this podcast, veteran broadcaster Howard Schwartz interviews me. Howard was a well known broadcast journalist for two decades, a corporate communications consultant and consumer advocate. He can reached at mediaman2000@att.net

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5xrzg0dy83wg81thfy1k8/Ep-I-10-24-Final-Mixdown.mp3?rlkey=gaytyaapz91eslvz79guw789p&st=m1unow71&dl=0

Transcript available.

Misbehaving children in the air raid shelter make as much noise as the missiles and/or Iron Dome exploding overhead. And they are just as annoying.

Just look at the parents of these noisy brats gawking at their cellphones with a zombie look on their face as their kids imitate the sirens, even after the sirens themselves have ceased splitting the air and piercing eardrums. What don’t they shut their kids up, or go out of the shelter to watch the missiles land?

The government sure knows how to make loud sirens, and collect taxes. Too bad they did not know about Oct 7^th.

The air in the shelter swelters with sweat, farts and dampness. It is too early to get out of the shelter as the order is to stay in the shelter until further notice. Christ, George just pissed on the floor of the shelter. He is recovering from a broken toe, and to make matters worse, he is 15 years old and suffers from canine dementia.

I run upstairs, get some paper towels, clean the mess amid the boom boom boom of incoming missiles. I then take the elevator up to my apartment, foregoing the protection afforded me by the shelter. Fuck it; I prefer the silence to the safety cum noise.

Later, I learn that there was a direct hit 1.5 km from my home.

In 1968, this was the choice that I made…I mean the choice I made to live here. In 1917, my grandfather’s brother and sister, Ida and Jack, also made this choice. Could it be genetic?

It is a choice that I never regret. Not for one second. “You and your Jewish holidays”, said our music teacher Ms. Bergstrom, moaning that the Jewish students did not attend class in September. “Who takes the Jew?”, referring to me as teams were formed in a football club. Quebec was a cruel place to be in the 1950’s once you put your toe outside the Jewish suburbs on Ville St Laurent or Cote St Luc.

Not regretting a decision certainly does not mean that this is a walk in a park on a sunny day. Well, not on a sunny day-the latest news is that I need to stay out of the sun, and I do not plan to challenge that advice which my dermatologist gave me.

Could the heartburn be a symptom of the stress? Certainly not. I am but 75 years old. I’m not that old! Or this is getting to me?

Is the stress accumulating to a point where it is almost intolerable?

The stress is intolerable, no doubt. Taubman’s book on Khrushchev is superb. I have just ordered a biography of Beria. I need to dig into the Soviet leadership a bit more. And the cinema club in Tel Aviv, what’s on next week?

And I splurged on a new Kindle!

“We had a 2 day session to improve teamwork. It consisted of a cooking class, feedback sessions and an exercise. Huge waste of time”.

There are a few misconceptions about teamwork I want to debunk.

Teamwork is not achieved by rallying around a mission. Mission statements are great products that sell well in the OD/Business consulting domain, and they have strategic value. Yet they are often too vague to mean anything when it comes down to issues of how to deal with team members who come from different disciplines.

Teamwork is not achieved by harmony. Teams are not a choir. Senior teams consist of domineering people with a high need for power, who are building their career, often to the detriment of others. In a senior team, there is no love lost between team members. It’s a battle of egos, clash of careers, a blame game and vying for attention from the boss and board.

Yet teamwork is a critical success factor without which organizations cannot minimize the over optimization of subsystems, which often throw teams off the cliff. Without teamwork, daily corrective actions are impossible because of mud-slinging such as long email threads on nonsense.

Teamwork is achieved by the distribution of power between team members that make cooperation worthwhile. When team members cannot bulldoze over others, and when constant escalation no longer works due to overdosing, team members will cooperate.

The most important derivative of this point is view is: ensure that short term interests between functions are aligned resulting in coalitions, and work with the CEO to ensure that power in distributed in a way that serves the tactical and strategic interests of the firm and minimizes pissing contests and overbearing behavior on the part of individual team players.

To illustrate: Head of Software Architecture presents a long term vision of the products functionality that is far beyond the capabilities of the present team, except for him. The R&D manager sets up a next generation team to counter the architect’s proposal. Finance proposes to reduce the number of $ spent on next generation in order to invest more in support. Head of Sales sells lots of new features, way off product roadmap.

What will drive teamwork? Short term goals, eliminating duplicate effort, chopping finances wings, and more involvement of sales in strategic planning. That is a long of hard work-not lovey dovey or formulation of airy mission statements.

Now here is the paradox. When power is balanced, relationships improve due to the acknowledgment of mutual dependencies, no doubt the ultimate goal of any organizational development effort.

PS. Several people have commented to me that strong relationships and bonding are majors enablers of teamwork. No doubt true. But the sustainability of bonding in a team without the proper allocation of power is limited.