My work in the consulting and training field began in the years 1983-1984, after I had graduated from Tel Aviv University with a master’s degree in labor studies and started working at the Israel Institute of Productivity, which, at the time, had been Israel’s largest consulting and training facility. Those were years filled with internships alongside senior consultants, both in the industry and in public organizations. Having spent a short period gaining experience in management at another research institute between 1985 and 1986, I started on my path as an independent consultant and lecturer in the fields I specialized in, namely, human resources and industrial relations. This was also when I first started writing for “Ksafim” (Money Matters) weekly magazine. In 1988, I started writing for two, then newly established, monthly magazines, directed at both sides of the spectrum: “Veadim” (Employees Committees) and “Mashabei Enosh” (Human Resources).

The Beginning – Industrial Relations

Constantly learning and encountering different audiences as a lecturer and writer, I had built up a base of knowledge and connections, which allowed me to offer consulting services early in my career, mostly in the field of industrial relations. In fact, the branding of my services during those years had such a strong effect, that, to this day, some see me, first and foremost, as an industrial relations expert.
During those years, I had provided consulting services for employees committees and management staff, including preparation for negotiations, formulation of work patterns and conflict management within the negotiation groups themselves, formulation of labor agreements and more. When consulting on conflict management cases, I chose not to represent a single party, but preferred rather to act to settle and neutralize the conflict, before a dispute would develop and control would be lost. Later, as this approach gained popularity and evolved, I was certified as a mediator specializing in industrial relations.

Human Resources and Organizational Consulting

In the late 1980s, I expanded my activity to the areas of human resources and organizational consulting. During the 1990s, I developed and ran executive development programs, assisted in the founding of human resources systems, took part in organizational recovery and change programs, developed performance assessment programs, formulated reward systems and more.

During that period, I provided expert opinions for various organizations, government institutions (such as the courts) and private individuals. An example of such a document would be an opinion concerning the extent, to which a woman’s employment capabilities were damaged, as a result of bodily harm; or an assessment of the generally accepted salary in a certain economic branch, performed for the purpose of calculating the compensation for a breach of agreement.

At the same time, I had also initiated and managed training courses, most of them in the field of human resources. Thus, for instance, I had served as the academic manager of the human resource manager training programs at both the HebrewUniversity in Jerusalem and The Open University, initiated the program for human resource management in the hotel industry at Haifa University and more. These activities usually took place as part of the universities’ external studies frameworks.

Journalism and Professional Writing

Alongside my activity in consulting, training and guidance during that period, I had also been actively engaged in the writing of articles for the press. Among other publications, I had written for the monthly magazines “Management” and “Status”.
During the 1990s I had been the author of the Management section in Globes economic daily newspaper. The section included opinion columns concerning the happenings in the local management field, a large number of articles on the subjects of management patterns and the employment world, and interviews with many executives.

The writing experience I had acquired in this field of activity, combining the writing styles of a journalist and an expert (extensive consulting reports and expert opinions), has led me to write books that fall somewhere between the academic and the practical.

The 2000s – Management and Career

The numerous encounters had led me to discover the career world: mostly that of executives, but also that of employees. Executives could no longer ignore the trend that had been affecting the employee management patterns in their organizations. It was a time when the term “job” had become archaic, and more and more people saw their workplace not just as a source of income, but as a central factor in the development of their careers.
This new addition to my list of activities fell in naturally with areas I had already been engaged in – the labor world, employee management patterns and organizational conduct in general.

Books

The in depth conversations I had had with executives, employees and experts as both a journalist and a consultant had produced a lot of information, which then quickly found its way to the recycling bins. These were the early days of the internet, and the newspapers had not yet known how to approach it. As a result, a lot of quality materials that could have served others were lost in the archives or simply discarded.
I had resolved to find a way to preserve the insights and lessons I had gathered over the years. The solution came in the form of books: they are kept, rather than thrown away, and people come back and review them as needed.

The first step was proving the seriousness of my intentions to myself, before others. I could have written a book based on my own knowledge and resources and published it independently, but that would have been too easy. I wanted to interview the top executives in Israel and put those interviews in print in the form of a book, through a well known, well established publisher.
“From Teva to Checkpoint” was published in 2001 by Yediot Aharonot publishing house. The book contains comprehensive interviews with top executives in the Israeli economy, including Teva’s Eli Hurvitz, Osem’s Dan Propper, Delta’s Dov Lautman, Checkpoint’s Gil Shwed, cousins Leon and Udi Recanati from Clal Group and others.
The creative process was enjoyable and the end product respectable, but the venture had one substantial shortcoming: the income it had produced was rather minuscule, which, I must admit, was no surprise. Nevertheless, I decided that this was what I wanted to do. To overcome this economic shortcoming, I had to make myself the owner of my books, which would allow me to sell them. The next eleven books I wrote were self published, some in collaboration with organizations, companies and the academy.

Thus, for instance, I initiated the work on my book, “Drushim”, in collaboration with Pilat Group, collaborated with organizational experts hailing from the computing and logistics fields for the writing of “Outsourcing” and with experts from the fields of media, banking, vehicles and others for the writing of “Customer Service”.

Some initiatives came from the clients themselves. For instance, the liquidators of Hasneh insurance company had ordered a comprehensive report (and book draft) on the company’s collapse and liquidation process, or The Technion’s Gordon Institute, which had initiated a collaborative study (to be published as a book) on systems engineering, in Israel and worldwide.

The Internet

Writing books soon became a dominant part of my activity. In the meantime, the internet had begun to redefine the media, allowing content to be preserved, which, as previously stated, was one of the issues that drove me to write management books in the first place.
Around the middle of the previous decade, I founded the website “Shuki Stauber – Management, Work, Career”, which also functions as a sort of personal magazine.At the same time, I returned to the writing of my column, “Management”; this time, for YNET, an online daily newspaper. The column had been published regularly until 2009.

Since then, I have written for various newspapers and magazines, mainly online, including “TheMarker”, “Walla! Business”, “Calcalist” and others. All this, while simultaneously uploading content to my own website, some of which also appeared in the mainstream media.

Overseas Activity

Until recently, all the books I had written had been in Hebrew, with local examples based on events and my personal experience inIsrael. In 2012, two significant steps were taken to expand the scope of my work. One was a start of writing a book on systems engineering (in cooperation with the Gordon Institute of the Technion), which includes conversations with experts from around the world. The book was published in Hebrew at 2014 (“From the Concorde to Iron Dome”). And in English at 2015 (“Managing and Engineering Complex Technology Systems”). The book “Who’s the manager here?” Was also translated into English.
During the years 2014-2015 I stayed in Berlin. conducting a research (in cooperation with the Neeman Institute of the Technion) on immigration from Israel to Berlin. 

In 2017 the book “Israelis in Berlin – Community in the Making” was published by Yedioth Books. I intend to continue the research of the emigration from Israel and the Israelis living abroad.

Nowadays activities

On 2016, I returned to the field of labor relations. For two years I studied the newly organized employees committees in Israel. In 2018 the book “The Struggle for unionization” was published.

Nowadays, I am working on a book on educational leadership in Israel.

Shuki Stauber