(Courtesy of Touro University) Touro University’s newly appointed Distinguished Global Professor Ido Aharoni takes a few minutes to discuss leadership, branding and business diplomacy. Aharoni brings unique experience to his new role with his background as former Israel Consul-General, public diplomacy specialist, founder of the Brand Israel program, and a well-known nation-branding practitioner who is consultant to Mastercard, Bank Leumi USA, APCO Worldwide and others.
With this rich background, what opportunities will you create at Touro?
I think there’s a real need to improve the interface between Israel and the American community, especially those in New York, Jews and non-Jews alike. A university, like Touro, that is dedicated to learning and teaching a diverse student body in the spirit of the Jewish tradition, can be a real bridge-builder in this effort.
My goal to connect Touro with the Israeli ecosystem goes beyond technology. I would like to enhance everything connected with nurturing innovation and entrepreneurship. The Israeli ecosystem excels in solving problems as a way of life and I would like to bring that to Touro. When I teach about business, I’ll touch topics that every business school teaches such as management, leadership and organizational knowledge but I will also work to impart knowledge that’s specific to my experience such as how do you market nations and places? How do you sell ideas? How do you conduct effective research? How does one introduce diplomatic techniques to business? How to navigate in today’s oversaturation of information? How to protect the legitimacy and reputation of your business?
You’ll be teaching non-product branding at Touro. Can you describe what nation branding is?
It’s about reputation and how that is part and parcel of a country’s national security. Many governments don’t understand that yet, including the government of Israel. The work that I did through Brand Israel as a result of 9/11 and the tectonic shift it generated is an example of nation branding. It centers around measuring and managing the reputation of cities and countries (by assessing the level of strength, esteem, relevance and knowledge consumers have about the place) and from that metric, developing a practical approach to management and enhancement of reputation.
How will it help students advocate for Israel in a post-October 7 world?
It will give them the tools they need to understand Israel. One of the reasons Israel is having such difficulty now is because of the loss of people’s ability to process complexity and nuance and frankly, because of the loss of objective truth. Everyone has his own truth today. As we enter the post-truth era fueled by the merciless algorithm, I’ll be working to give students tools to accurately assess the stature of the brand. We will discuss Israel as a brand as well as the brands of other places such as South Africa, Spain and New York City.
Based on their assessment, students will develop more intimate knowledge of Israel and be in a position to engage in effective, complex conversation about the country and what it represents and most importantly, about what value Israel brings to the world—a piece that is now missing from the conversation. Israel is being viewed as a place that is engaged in endless conflict with its neighbors. Students will learn that Israel is so much more than just conflict. They will learn that Israel is a complex place that is a product of an age-old desire to solve problems that are both universal and local.
What is the connection between diplomacy and the business world?
In the age of information overload, elements from the world of diplomacy can be used to enhance business. For example, diplomacy can offer ways to protect the legitimacy of your business in a world with so much inaccurate information and in a world where people opine on things they know nothing about. On the practical side, how do you work with government and regulators to enhance the strategy of your business? In a global sense, diplomacy is the opposite of war. Learning the art of effective listening, the art of negotiation and how to effectively maintain your network are all ways that diplomacy enhances business.
When it comes to leadership, business and political leaders today have a great deal of influence—how to be a transformational leader or an effective transactional leader. We will look at leaders who have experienced crisis, analyze how they addressed them and what they could have done to avoid those crises from a business diplomacy perspective. The last element of business diplomacy is learning the art of effective communication in the age of information overload.
In your opinion what is the most important skill for American Jewish college grads entering the world and the workforce today?
People are learning through pop culture that effective businesspeople need to be merciless. We call it instrumental relationships, where successful executives treat people like instruments, using them when they need them and then move on. The reality is that effective business leaders are exactly the opposite. It sounds counterintuitive in the age of technology, but those who connect to people on a human level and look at their employees as partners, not instruments, are the most successful. Starbucks is a great example of a company whose leadership fostered success by collaborating with employees.
The skills I want my students to learn are how to come up with a vision, articulate it and galvanize people around it. That is the key to success in Jewish life and leadership. We are facing a difficult time, and we need a new generation of leaders. It is my hope that some of these leaders will come from the ranks of Touro University.
