How David Became a Goliath

Even though the IDF operates on a scale that is comparable to some of the world’s largest corporations and government agencies, it is more agile and less formal than a Silicon Valley start-up. The IDF accomplishes this feat by combining traditional management structures with a bottom-to-top decision-making system that encourages innovation, enables rapid adaptability, and ensures sustainable growth. 

Encouraging a Constant State of Mutiny

IDF commanders lead through persuasion. Orders are essentially suggestions that are open to debate and strategy often changes due to input from subordinates. The IDF approach empowers employees, drives innovation, enables business agility, increases retention, and maximizes utilization of existing resources.  

Where a Private Outranks a General

The relatively seamless integration between two equally important decision-making frameworks – one that is top-to-bottom and the other which is bottom-to-top – enables the IDF to rapidly adjust strategy, force structure, and tactics to meet changes in the competitive environment, replicate successful tactics across the entire organization, and eliminate repetition of past failures. 

How to Build Special Forces

The IDF equates the empowerment of its personnel with achieving competitive advantage. Most organizations perceive new technology as the fastest path to increasing the capabilities and productivity of personnel, but the IDF focuses on developing its human capital. Investing in people instead of technology costs substantially less and leads to measurable performance improvements within weeks. 

The Right to Refuse an Order

Israeli soldiers have the legal right and obligation to disobey immoral orders. It is left to the soldiers to decide what is immoral. This encourages critical-thinking, promotes leadership, and keeps bad decisions – directives that will negatively impact the organization’s ability to achieve its objectives – from being implemented.   

The Power of Perception

Corporations understandably consider their marketing and communications capabilities to be vastly superior to government agencies and military organizations, but the IDF has established brand loyalty and awareness that must even make Apple envious. Internally, the IDF instills a clear understanding of its mission and a consistent vision of its values to every member of its organization. Externally, the IDF maintains and augments its reputation as a highly capable fighting force. 

Implementing Best Practices in Large Organizations

The best approach for integrating PMI concepts will depend on the size, maturity, and complexity of an organization. For large organizations, the steps include determining the current state of business agility, developing a strategic road map, and executing best practice methods for business transformation.

Implementing Best Practices in Small and Mid-Sized Organizations
PMI concepts and methods for transforming large organizations are applicable to organizations of all sizes, but small and mid-size organizations must overcome a unique set of critical challenges – survival, stagnation, and achieving sustainable growth – that can all be addressed by the IDF approach.

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