Vision to Reality: The Reut Blog

The Jerusalem Post (17/8) reports that Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On submitted two alternate budget proposals last week, one with an emphasis on defense and the other on social welfare. Whie he wanted the Cabinet themselves to choose where the cuts would come from, the responses reflect what Ron Heifetz calls ‘Work Avoidance.’

Some responses from the authority figures…

Tzachi Hangebi: next year will be a year of confrontation and therefore, cutting the army’s budget would not be a good idea.

Ehud Barak: Israel does “not have the luxury” to make budget cuts “in the face of threats we face”

Eli Yishai: “choosing between defense and social welfare is like choosing between your first and second born child.”

These comments reflect what Ron Heifetz calls ‘Work Avoidance’ (“Holding on to past assumptions, scapegoating, denying the problem, or finding a distracting issue to restore stability and prevent the stress of facing and taking responsibility for a complex challenge”)

Bar On’s proposal is a classic action of leadership – what Heifetz calls Orchestrating the Conflict by Returning the Work to Stakeholders (in this case the Cabinet ministers)

Orchestrating the Conflict is “The exposure and orchestration of conflict – internal contradictions – within individuals and constituencies to provide the leverage for mobilizing people to learn new ways…The task is to orchestrate the clash of views so that the factions learn from one another…”

But what happens when the Stakeholders don’t want to have to do the work?