What Number Are You?

This is an amazing video that has won 15 awards and was translated into 27 languages. 

It is an animation film and moves a little slowly from my perspective, but the message is terrific!

The short film is about us--all people--we live in the ever present "caste" society, not of yesteryear, but of all time. 

It is about where people are (or aren't) in the pecking order of life and that despite our "place," we can still find success. 

Some are born "Zero's" and live a life of prejudice, persecution, bullying, and torment. 

Others are born high numbers, and they are the elites in society--given the best educational and professional, materialistic, and networking opportunities. 

Many in our age have recognized that this trend continues unabated--only now it's called things like Occupy Wall Street and referred to as the 99% and 1%.

In the past, it was variations of slaves and masters; fiefs, vassals, and lords, and now-a-days even average workers and the C-Suite.

In the video, "A Zero is a zero"--he is bullied in school, and thrown into the gutter as an adult by "the higher numbers."

I am certain that many of us can relate to this...in fact, this video has been viewed almost 1.3 million times on Youtube already.

Only when Zero meets another zero and has a baby--who is born an "infinite," does everyone else stop and literally bow down. 

While I believe that we all need to work hard and contribute and in no way, believe that anyone who is able to contribute should be given a "free ride," I do believe firmly that we are all human beings, G-d's children, and deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. 

Everyone has a value in society and from nothing (or Zero) can come something amazing, if we only give people a fighting chance.

Personally, I am a child of Holocaust survivors, and my family came over with nothing. My grandmother cried that they didn't have a chair to sit on when they came to this country.  

The Nazis took everything, lives and things. As the presumed high and mighty "Aryan race," everyone else was zero fodder for the ovens in the concentration camps or to be shot through the head while begging for mercy on their knees. 

Like my grandparents, my uncle by marriage and his brother came over on a children's transport train, alone and completely on their own, to try and "make it," after being orphaned by Nazi murderers.

In the holocaust, the Nazis treated all their victims as Zero's by tattooing numbers on their arms to dehumanize them.

This is part of a long historical plot of the strong and the weak, the haves and the have nots--the high numbers and the zeros in this world.

When as a 10-year old, we moved to Riverdale, New York, a very affluent neighborhood in the Bronx bordering Westchester, most of my classmates lived in million-dollar mansions, while we lived on "the other side of town."  

I grew up understanding that I had to be determined, work hard, and pray hard to try and climb up the ladder and it's numbered stairs--in fact, like "Rocky," I used to run the stairs--hundreds of times!

But to me, determination and hard work seem to come natural--thank G-d--but even more important to me was not monetary success but decency, integrity, speaking truth, and working for the advancement of all on as level a playing field as we can get. 

I will not bow to "infinity" as the others in the movie and in real life have done, but I will try and help make infinity a place that we all can aspire to.

What Number Are You?

A Rocky Moment

I was searching for just the right clip for how I feel about determination and perseverance, discipline and focus--and this is it.

Fight the good fight--Go Rocky!

A Rocky Moment

Leadership Lessons from 127 Hours

Rarely does a movie get an 8.7 out of 10 in the reviews, so I had to go see the movie 127 Hours about Aron Ralston, the hiker who got trapped under a boulder in 2003 while mountain climbing in Utah, and had to amputate his own arm to free himself.
This was an incredible story of survival.

The guy had to drink his own urine to survive after running out of drinking water and finally had to break his own bones and cut off his own forearm with a dull blade and use a pliers to tear through his tendons in order to finally dislodge himself after 5 days of being trapped.
But what is even more amazing to me than what Aron had to do to survive is what he has chosen to do afterwards with his life.
Aside from the media appearances, motivational speaking, writing a book Between A Rock And A Hard Place, and getting married and having a son, Aron continues to be an ardent mountain climber.
While many people would actually choose to “lick their wounds” and basically find another hobby—a safer one, Aron continues to do what he loves—climbing.
He is not deterred.
To the contrary—he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2009 and still plans to climb Mt. Everest.
Aron inspires me, yet I have conflicting emotions about his choices.
Part of me thinks this guy is off the wall, since he took so many life-threatening chances (for example, climbing without even letting anyone know where he was) and nearly got himself killed, and now he continues to do pursue this dangerous sport with only one arm!
And another part of me is awed by him. He is unstoppable. He knows what he loves and he pursues it, no matter what: Terror, trauma, two arms or one, Aron will be climbing as long as he is able.
It is a great thing to be true to yourself, to have a passion, and to pursue it relentlessly. However, I believe it is a blessing to also have the wisdom to balance even the greatest of pursuits with sound judgement, so excuse the pun, you don’t end up having to cut off your nose (or in this case your arm) in despite of your face.
Aron is an inspiration similar to the movie character Rocky in terms of his determination and perseverance, but even Rocky knew when his health was at risk and it was time to hang his gloves up. Knowing when it’s safe to go and when it’s necessary to pause or even stop is an important part of our survival skills and it doesn’t mean that we are any less passionate about who we are or what we are about or believe in.
Passion should mean we responsibly grow into our pursuits and not unnecessarily die trying. In the movie, I got the impression that Aron was more than a little reckless, and he paid a heavy price for it, but I admire his bravery and that he continues to pursue his dreams.
In our organizations, we should encourage everyone to find their passion in the work they do—because that is a motivator for people that supersedes any paycheck or bonus management can provide.

Leadership Lessons from 127 Hours

The Spirit of A Warrior

Meaningful in life and in leadership...

“The spirit of a warrior is not geared to indulging and complaining, nor is it geared to winning or losing. The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every struggle is a warrior’s last battle on earth. Thus the outcome matters very little to him. In his last battle on earth a warrior lets his spirit flow free and clear. And as he wages his battle, knowing that his intent is impeccable, a warrior laughs and laughs.”

- Carlos Castaneda

The Spirit of A Warrior

Fire In The Belly

Recently I read a classic article in Harvard Business Review (March-April 1992) called “Managers and Leaders,” by Abraham Zaleznik, in which he differentiates between these two frequently confused types of people.

Some highlights:

	Leaders	Managers
Personality	Shape the goals	Solve the problems
Decision-making	Open up new options	“Limit choices” to execute
Relationships	Emotion-driven	Process-oriented
Risks	Prudent risk-takers	Conservative risk-avoidance
Sense of self	Strong and separate	Based on the organization

In my experience, Zaleznik was correct in observing that leaders and managers are very different. In particular, I have seen the following.

· Discipline: Leadership is more of an art, and management is more of a science.

· Orientation: Leaders focus on “the what,” (i.e. effectiveness) and managers on “the how” (i.e. efficiency).

· Aptitude: Leaders are visionaries and motivators, and managers are skilled at execution and organization.

· Ambitions: Leaders seek to be transformational catalysts for change, and managers (as Zaleznik points out) seek perpetuation of the institution.

Given that leaders and managers are inherently dissimilar, advancement from management to leadership is not an absolute, nor is it necessarily a good thing. However, many managers aspire to be leaders, and with training, coaching, and mentoring, some can make this leap. Those who can make their mark as leaders are incredibly valuable to organizations because they know how to transform, shape, and illuminate the way forward. Of course, the role that managers play is incredibly valuable as well (probably undervalued), but nevertheless, they support and execute on the vision of the leader and as such a leader commands a premium.

What I think we can take away from Zaleznik’s work, then, is that a leader should never be thought of as just a manager “on steroids.” Instead, leaders and managers are distinct, and the synergy between them is healthy, as they each fulfill a different set of needs. In this vein, when organizations seek to recruit from within the ranks for leadership positions, it would be wise for them to look at candidates more discriminatingly than just looking at their managerial experience. (In fact, counter to the conventional wisdom, the best leader may never have been a manager at all, or may have been a mediocre or even a horrible one!) We cannot just expect that good managers will necessarily make good leaders (although to some extent success may breed success), but must look for what fundamentally makes a leader and ensure that we are getting what is needed and unique.

So what can a person do if they want to be a leader? In my view, it starts with believing in yourself, then genuinely wanting to achieve a leadership position, and after that being willing to do what it takes to get there. Baseline efforts include advancing your education, hard work, building relationships and credibility, and so forth, but this is only part of the equation.

The truth of the matter is, you can go to an Ivy League school and leadership boot camp for twenty years, but if you don’t have passion, determination, and a sense of mission or cause that comes from deep inside, then you are not yet a leader. These things cannot be taught or handed over to a person like a baton in a relay race. Rather, they are fundamental to who you are as a person, what drives you, and what you have to give to others and to the organization.

Regardless of what role we play, each of us has a unique gift to share with the world. We need only to find the courage to look inside, discover what it is, value its inherent worth (no matter what the dollar value placed on it), and pursue it.

Fire In The Belly

Nothing Stops A "Govie"

(Generic picture of brave soul, 2010 snowstorm)

Nothing Stops A "Govie"

The Window and the Mirror and Enterprise Architecture

I came across some interesting leadership lessons that can be helpful to enterprise architect leaders in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins.

At the most basic level, Collins says that a “level 5” executive or great leader is a “paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will." “Level 5 leaders channel their ego away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company…their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.”

Furthermore, level 5 great leaders differ from good leaders in terms of “the window and the mirror.”

• Great leaders—“look out the window to attribute success to factors outside themselves, [and] when things go poorly, they look in the mirror and blame themselves.”
• Good (non-great) leaders—“look in the mirror to take credit for success, but out the window to assign blame for disappointing results.”
  

Interestingly enough, many leaders attributed their company’s success to “good luck” and failures to “bad luck”. Collins writes: “Luck. What an odd factor to talk about. Yet, the good-to-great executives talked a lot about luck in our interviews. This doesn’t sound like Harvard or Yale MBAs talking does it?

Collins comments on this bizarre and repeated reference to luck and states: “We were at first puzzled by this emphasis on good luck. After all, we found no evidence that the good-to-great companies were blessed with more good luck than the comparison companies.”

What puzzles me is not only the lack of attribution for company success to global factors, general market conditions, competitive advantage, talented leadership, great architecture, astute planning, sound governance, great products/services, creative marketing, or amazing employees, but also that there is no mention or recognition in the study of good-to-great leaders in the benevolence from the Almighty G-d, and no apparent gratitude shown for their companies’ success. Instead, it's all about their personal brilliance or general good luck.

Where is G-d in the leaders' calculus for business success?

It seems that the same good-to-great leaders that “look out the window to attribute success to factors outside themselves,” also are looking down at superstitious or “Vegas-style” factors of luck, rather than looking out the window and up to the heavens from where, traditionally speaking, divine will emanates.

Perhaps, there should be a level 6 leader (after the level 5 great leader) that is “truly great” and this is the leader that not only has personal humility and professional will, but also belief in a power much higher than themselves that supersedes “good luck.”

The Window and the Mirror and Enterprise Architecture

Rocky and The Total CIO

The Total CIO:

1. Multitasks
   
2. Always is training (and learning)
   
3. Leads by example
   
4. Inspires others
   
5. Is determined and persistent
6. Has inner strength
   
7. Everything is a potential technology/tool
8. Means business
   
9. Gets results
   
10. Above all, has a heart

Rocky and The Total CIO

The Secret Service in Action

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Once again, it's all about the mission. 

Focus, determination, absolute dedication to service. 

Principles every organization can adopt in their architectures.

And by the way, I am very proud to say my alma mater.

The Secret Service in Action

Talent, Determination, and The Total CIO

To become a great CIO or a great anything, what is the driving factor—talent or determination?

Fortune Magazine, 27 October 2008, has a book excerpt from Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin.

Often, as individuals we’re afraid that if we don’t have the inborn talent then we can’t really compete and certainly won’t succeed. But that isn’t true!

Here’s an interesting anecdote about Jeffrey Immelt and Steven Balmer. “One of them recalls, ‘we were voted two guys probably least likely to succeed.’” They played waste-pin basketball with waded-up memos at P&G before becoming CEOs of General Electric and Microsoft.

Research shows talent is not the decisive factor:

“In studies of accomplished individuals, researchers have found few signs of precocious achievement before the individuals started intensive training…Such findings do not prove that talent doesn’t exist. But they do suggest an intriguing possibility: that if it does, it may be irrelevant.”

So if innate talent is what makes for high achievement, what does?

The answer is…”deliberate practice” characterized by the following:

• Stretch goals—“continually stretching an individual just beyond his ir her current abilities.”
• Repetition—“top performers repeat their practice activities to a stultifying extent.”
• Feedback—“in many important situations, a teacher, a coach, or mentor is vital for providing crucial feedback.”
• No pain, no gain—“we identify the painful, difficult activities that will make us better and do those things over and over…if the activities that lead to greatness were easy and fun, then everyone would do them.”

So what do you do if you want to be a great CIO or successful in any professional endeavor?

• Set goals.
• Plan how to reach them.
• Observe yourself/self-regulate.
• Self-evaluate.
• Adapt to perform better.
• Repeat.

This is where determination comes in and makes the difference between success and failure.

“What you want—really, deeply want—is fundamental because deliberate practice is an investment. The costs come now, the benefits later. The more you want something, the easier it will be for you to sustain the needed effort.”

In any case, “the evidence…shows that the price of top level achievement is extraordinarily high…by understanding how a few become great, all can become better.”

Talent, Determination, and The Total CIO

Nimbleness, Ingenuity and The Total CIO

We all know the story of David and Goliath, where little David slays the monstrous adversary from the Philistines, Goliath.

From a religious perspective, of course, David is victorious over this incredible enemy, by the hand of G-d; it is a miracle!

Metaphorically, David slays the Giant with a rock and sling shot overcoming the daunting Goliath and his foreboding weapons (sword, spear, shield, and armor); it is David’s nimbleness and ingenuity that overcome the hulking and conventional giant, Goliath.

You have to love this story.

Good wins over evil. The smaller defeat the larger. The underdog overcomes the “sure thing.”

The modern day, Hollywood version of this is Rocky whose sheer determination and laser focus prevails against superior adversaries. How many times does the smaller Rocky defeat the larger, better trained, more muscular opponents? Remember—Apollo Creed (taller, trimmer, faster), Hulk Hogan (the giant who literally picks Rocky up over his head), Clubber Lang (the awesome Mr. T), Ivan Drago (the steroidal, methodically-trained Soviet), and so on.

David versus Goliath, Rocky versus Ivan Drago…

While these are amazing and inspiring stories of success, these aren’t unique stories or themes in history. Why?

As the old saying goes, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.” Small, nimble, and innovative can and will overcome large, lumbering giants. This can be in the ring (like Rocky), on the battlefield (like David and Goliath), and in marketplace competition (like challenger brands such as Apple, Google, Honda…).

Recently, the Wall Street Journal has an article entitled “Honda’s Flexible Plants Provide Edge.” (23 September 2008)

“One recent morning, the Hondo Motor Co. plant here churned out 120 Civic compacts. Then the production line came to a halt and workers in white uniforms swept in to install new hand-like parts on the giant gray robots that weld steel into the car’s frames. About five minutes later, the line roared back to life, and the robots began zapping together a longer, taller vehicle, the CR-V cross-over. In the automotive world, this is considered quite a feat.”

Honda’s plants are the most nimble in the industry.

In the first 2/3 of the year, while sales are down 24% at Chrysler, 18% at CM, 15% at Ford, and even 7.8% at Toyota, Honda is up 1.7%!

Like with Honda’s more efficient production process—“to shuffle production among different plants as well as make different models in one plant--flexibility and innovation are the rocks and slingshot of the modern day David. Watch out Goliaths!

The great lesson here for large, successful organizations is that no matter how much bigger and better you are than the competition, you can never rest on your laurels.

Time can change everything.

The smaller, seemingly disadvantaged enterprise is eyeing those in the #1 spot and taking it as their personal challenge to unseat them. They are clawing their way up and will use their smaller size to outmaneuver, and their ability to innovate to leap ahead of the competition.

The Total CIO (like King David and Rocky) find a strategic advantage to enable them to overcome stronger and/or larger competitors. The Total CIO leverages technology/business process improvement as tools of innovation to change the game completely.

Nimbleness, Ingenuity and The Total CIO

Midlife Crisis and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architecture is about managing change in the organization; however, there comes a time in our lives when there is an unprecedented opportunity for personal growth and change and that is when we reach midlife.

The reason that midlife is the prime time for self-realization is that we have enough life experience to know ourselves well, a little money to facilitate change, and enough time left to make a difference.

Harvard Business Review, February 2008, states that “midlife is your best and last chance to become the real you.”

Midlife crisis is a term coined by Elliott Jaques, a Canadian psychoanalyst and organizational consultant. It refers to a period when “we come face-to-face with our limitations, our restricted possibilities, and our mortality.”

Midlife crisis occurs approximately from age 43-62. It is a time when we are faced with dual “myths”. One is the fear that midlife is the “onset of decline” and the other is the fantasy that with “enough vision and willpower,” we can be “anything or anybody”. If we can overcome both fear and fantasy and anchor our choices in intelligent transitions, then we can make some phenomenal life changes and achieve amazing personal growth and satisfaction.

“Life expectancy today in the West is around 80 and continues to rise”, so there is no reason that health in midlife should be a show-stopper for most people’s aspirations. Further, with approximately 20 years or more of professional experience by this time in our lives, our plans for next-stage life growth, and what Carl Yung called individuation, should be more easily tempered by our understanding of what is and is not possible. “Magical transformations do not happen,” but meaningful growth and challenge can.

Isn’t it risky to make changes in midcareer/midlife?

Yes and no. Risk has to be managed. Staying the course has its advantages, but it also has its limitations, and when a person is bored, unchallenged, or just in a plain old midlife rut, worse mistakes can happen if negative feelings are just left to fester. That’s why it’s important to take control of one’s life, “by thinking not in terms of safety nets, but of active risk management,” that weight risk and rewards.

Should we reach for the stars?

Interestingly enough, we see the stars at night, which is also the time for dreaming. “The British psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott characterized dreaming as the use of the imagination to create possible scenarios in which our potential can come to fruition. But to be productive, dreams must be connected to our potential.” That’s the difference between a dream and a fantasy.

In terms of reaching for our dreams, we need to dream to envision what could be. With the vision in hand, I would say go for it if the vision leads to what I would call intelligent life transitions—where change is thoughtful, achievable, growth-oriented, and personally satisfying.

As adults, we need to separate the TV and Hollywood fantasies from realities and our true capabilities. If we focus on self-actualization (the highest human need according to Abraham Maslow)—the realization of our individual potentials, the discovery of who we are and can be—then we have an opportunity to live again and an even fuller life then the first half.

Just as enterprise architecture plans, manages, and measures change and transformation for the organization, so too every individual must become their own enterprise architect and plan and direct change in their lives. Most positive change doesn’t occur by chance, although Divine providence is the guiding hand in all. If we take the principles of enterprise architecture and apply them to our own lives, then we will seek to understand and come to terms with our current state, envision our target that will help us self-actualize, and plan a realistic life transition.

Midlife Crisis and Enterprise Architecture

Organizational Culture and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architecture is about managing change and complexity in the organization. EA establishes the roadmap to evolve, transform and remain competitive in an ever changing world. Part of change involves continually going out there and simply trying—trying to climb the next rung on the ladder; trying to innovate and do something that hasn’t been done before; and generally speaking, trying to do things better, faster, cheaper.

As children, we all learned the old saying, “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.” This lesson can apply to both individuals and organizations.

In EA, we set targets that are ambitious. If the targets are too easy to achieve, then they are not challenging us to be our best. So we set the bar high—not too high, so that we fall on our face and break our nose—but high enough, so that we don’t necessarily achieve the target the first time around. We set stretch targets, so that we really are transforming the organization.

How do we keep the organizations focused on the goals and continuously trying to achieve the next big thing?

Well, people like organizations, need to sincerely believe that they indeed can succeed, and they must be dedicated and determined to succeed and achieve their goals.

The Wall Street Journal, 29 April 2008 reports that “‘self-efficacy’ [is] the unshakable belief that some people have that they have what it takes to succeed.”

This is the differentiator between “what makes some people [and organizations] rebound from defeats and go on to greatness while others throw in the towel.”

Is self-efficacy the same as self-esteem?

No. Self-efficacy is “a judgment of specific capabilities, rather than a general feeling of self-worth…there are people with high self-efficacy who ‘drive themselves hard but have low self-esteem because their performance always falls short of their high standards. Still such people succeed because they believe that persistent effort will let them beat the odds.”

“Where does such determination come from?”

Well, there is both nature and nurture involved. “In some cases it’s inborn optimism—akin to the kind of resilience that enables some children to emerge unscathed from extreme poverty, tragedy, or abuse. Self-efficacy can also be built by mastering a task; by modeling the behavior of others who have succeeded; and from…getting effective encouragement, distinct from empty praise.”

Organizations are like people. In fact, organizations are made up of people focused on and working towards a common cause in a structured environment.

Like people, organizations need to believe in their goals and be determined to achieve them. The whole organization needs to come together and rally around the goals and be of one mind, convinced that they can and will achieve success.

Of course, neither people nor organizations succeed the first time around every time. We can’t get discouraged or be afraid to make mistakes. Our organizations need to encourage and promote self-efficacy among their employees so that they will engage in reasonable risk taking in order to innovate and transform.

“It took Thomas Edison 1,000 tries before he invented the light bulb. (‘I didn’t fall 1,000 times, he told a reporter. ‘The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps’).”

Organizational Culture and Enterprise Architecture

Self-Determination and Enterprise Architecture

There is an age old question whether we make our own fate or whether it is predetermined.

For thousands of years, people have turned to prophets, fortune tellers, mystics, and star gazing to try and divine their futures. Yet, at the same time, we are taught that every child has the opportunity to become the President of the United States or an astronaut, or whatever their hearts desire; that laser-like focus, discipline, repetition and determination breeds success. Haven’t we always been taught to always try our best?

Surely, this is one of the irresolvable conflicts that philosophically can never be truly resolved: If the future is already predetermined, then how can we affect it? Further, if our actions can impact the future, then how the future be predetermined?

The way ahead is to work to influence our future, knowing full well that many things are indeed beyond our control.

From an organization perspective, there are no guarantees for the future, so we must take the reins of change, plan and manage it: one way we do this is through enterprise architecture.

In Fortune Magazine, 5 May 2008, in an article entitled, “The Secret of Enduring Greatness,” it states that “the best corporate leaders never point out the window to blame external conditions; they look in the mirror and say, ‘We are responsible for the results.’”

The future of our organizations are not static and so our leadership cannot rest on its laurels, rather we must continually plan for and execute innovation and transformation.

If we look at the largest corporations in America, the Fortune 500, we see that companies rise and fall to/from prominence with almost unbelievable speed. Here are some examples:

• “The vast majority of those on the list 50 years ago are nowhere to be found on the current list” (only 71 of the original 500 companies from 1955 are still on the list today).
• “Nearly 2000 companies have appeared on the list since its inception.”
• “Some of the most powerful companies on today’s list—businesses like Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Dell, and Google” didn’t even exist in 1955 and conversely, “some of the most celebrated companies in history no longer even appear on the 500, having fallen from great to good to gone.”
  

So if the tides start to turn down for a company, what are they to do—simply accept their fate, and perish like so many of those that came before them or do they fight to survive, knowing full well that they may not or will likely not succeed?

I say we fight to survive—we plan and execute change—we transform, and we live to fight another day.

“Just because a company stumbles—or gets smacked upside the head by an unexpected event or a new challenge—does not mean that it must continue to decline. Companies do not fall primarily because of what the world does to them or because of how the world changes around them; they fall first and foremost because of what they do to themselves.”

One example is IBM that stumbled in the late 1980’s in relying on what was becoming commoditized hardware, but transformed themselves in the early 1990’s to a software and services juggernaut. Similarly, Apple transformed from a niche computer manufacturer to a consumer electronics dynamo with their innovations such as the iPod and iPhone.

Essentially it comes down to the ability of the organization to manage change and complexity (as John Zachman stated) to adapt and transform, and we do this through enterprise architecture

Self-Determination and Enterprise Architecture

David Ben-Gurion and Enterprise Architecture

Ben-Gurion was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Important People of the Century.

“Part Washington, part Moses, he was the architect of a new nation state that altered the destiny of the Jewish people — and the Middle East.”

What made Ben-Gurion the great architect of state of Israel?

1. Vision—Ben-Gurion had a clear vision for the future survival of the Jewish people. “Shocked by anti-Semitic pogroms in Eastern Europe, he saw the creation of an independent homeland for the homeless Jewish people as, first and foremost, a crucial provision for the survival of persecuted Jews.” Further, Ben-Gurion always wanted Israel to become a ‘Light unto the Nations,’ an exemplary polity abiding by the highest moral standards.”
2. Strategy—Ben-Gurion had a strategy to accomplish his vision. “Throughout the tragic years from 1936 to 1947, while millions of Jews were rounded up and murdered by the Germans, denied asylum by almost all nations and barred by the British from finding a home in Palestine, he subtly orchestrated a complex strategy: he inspired tens of thousands of young Jews from Palestine to join the British army in fighting the Nazis, but at the same time authorized an underground agency to ship Jewish refugees into the country…This strategy helped bring about the favorable atmosphere that led to the 1947 U.N. resolution, partitioning Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.”
3. Determination—Ben-Gurion was determined to execute his strategy. “Ben-Gurion's iron-will leadership during the fateful 1 1/2 years of that touch-and-go war [after 1948] turned him from ‘first among equals’ in the Zionist leadership into a modern-day King David.”
4. Leadership—Ben-Gurion was a true leader. “The crux of his leadership was a lifelong, partly successful struggle to transplant a tradition of binding majority rule in a painfully divided Jewish society that for thousands of years had not experienced any form of self-rule, not even a central spiritual authority. In the early years of the state, many Israelis saw him as a combination of Moses, George Washington, [and] Garibaldi.”
   

(adapted from http://www.time.com/time/time100)

To me, David Ben-Gurion is a hero who led the Jewish people on a road toward survival and statehood at its darkest hour in history. From the ashes of 6 million Jews murdered in the holocaust, David Ben-Gurion, like Moses, led the people from near total annihilation to rebirth in the promised land.

As an enterprise architect, I can only marvel and be utterly inspired by the building blocks of vision, strategy, determination and leadership that made David Ben-Gurion the “great architect and builder” honored by Time Magazine's 100 Most Important People of the 20^th century.

David Ben-Gurion and Enterprise Architecture