In Hostile Territory : Business Secrets of a Mossad Combatant [Hardcover]

Gerald Westerby (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1998

In Hostile Territory provokes insights about working in teams, using power and influence, turning adversity to advantage and avoiding competence traps that can derail your career. The everyday challenges Westerby faced as a Mossad Combatant translate into vivid lessons for today's business leaders."
Marc J. Ventresca, department of organization behavior, Kellogg Graduate School of Management

You've heard it said before: Business is war. Whether you own a company or work as a salaried employee, you know it to be true competition has never been more savage, customers more demanding, margins more fragile, management more erratic, Wall Street more unpredictable, government more intrusive. To succeed in these times takes a special blend of guts and savvy.

Nowhere will you find a better teacher and guide to surviving and thriving in this no-holds-barred world than Gerald Westerby, a former secret agent in the Mossad, Israel's famed elite special-operations organization. As a deep-cover Combatant, Westerby's assignments took him into hostile territory throughout the Middle East and Europe, where he ran businesses as fronts for intelligence gathering and covert operations.

His businesses prospered and his clandestine missions succeeded under conditions so adverse that a middle manager's worst nightmares could not conjure them. Operating without outside support, without business advisors, managers, or consultants, he learned to rely on no one but himself and the business lessons learned in his Mossad training. Now he offers these lessons to you.

In Hostile Territory&Nbsp reveals for the first time the secrets that make Mossad Combatants the world's best businessmen and most feared secret agents. Westerby's gripping accounts of his sensational exploits in the field will have you holding your breath with excitement. The tough-minded business lessons and hard-edged personal tactics he draws from them will show you how to operate at a whole new level of achievement.

In the tradition of Sun-tzu's The Art of War,In Hostile Territorywill teach you how to become a modern warrior in today's high-stakes business battlefield. Prepare for an adventure-filled journey beyond the conventions of business as you've ever known it.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Gerald Westerby" (not his real name) is a former Combatant in the Mossad, Israel's special-operations agency, who now makes his living as an international business consultant and entrepreneur. In Hostile Territory spices up relatively straightforward business advice, founded on the three principles of "Patience, Preparation, and Persistence," with illustrative stories of undercover missions in, among other venues, Yemen, the Iran-Iraq war, and Libya. It's an thrilling spy tale from which you might actually learn a thing or two.

From Publishers Weekly

To the business-as-war canon you can add this take by a purported member of Israel's clandestine special operations organization, the Mossad. Westerby, a pseudonym for a man described as a "millionaire" entrepreneur, tells war stories?both real and apocryphal?by beginning his chapters with reference to a biblical tale from which he then draws inferences. Westerby's stories become business case studies, whether he's rescuing Jews in Yemen, destroying an Iraqi nuclear reactor or even retelling Old Testament stories about the likes of King Solomon and Jacob. He uses the biblical stories to introduce business concepts such as the need for planning, patience and staying focused on what you're trying to accomplish. The stories sometimes go on for too long, and the points will seem obvious to many. Yet in the tradition of military leaders, Westerby is inspirational. He can make starting a business sound as if it truly is equal to starting a war, and if nothing else, a businessperson can always crib a couple of his tales to tell at the next board meeting.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 290 pages
• Publisher: Harperbusiness; 1st edition (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887309011
• ISBN-13: 978-0887309014
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #192,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars quirky but fascinating, August 16, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: In Hostile Territory : Business Secrets of a Mossad Combatant (Hardcover)

I found a used copy of this and was immediately entranced. It's a strange combo of a business/ self-help guide and spy thriller and it works as either. I thought the advice was interesting "Goal is everything. First you define it, then it defines you." "Impatient action leads to failure, but patient inaction is failure itself." The espionage stories are better than fiction. I laughed out loud at his exploits in Libya and Iraq. Where was I when this book came out? It should be in paperback and audio instead of out of print.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Napolean Hill would have titled "Do and Be Successful", August 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: In Hostile Territory : Business Secrets of a Mossad Combatant (Hardcover)

As a new business owner, I wish I would have read this book one year ago. I have learned many of the lessons set forth in Hostile Territory the hard way.

This book should be required reading for anyone contemplating a future in business. The table of contents reads like a cookbook for success; How to set a goal and accomplish it, how to choose your timing, when to exercise power and many others, including my favorite, choosing a team for a high stakes mission.

The blend of business wisdom and international intrigue make for a quick and enjoyable read. I simply couldn't put it down.

Ned Webber

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Full of case studies for business schools, June 20, 2006

By 

Mahesh Hegade (Pleasanton, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In Hostile Territory : Business Secrets of a Mossad Combatant (Hardcover)

This book is certainly 5 star.

If you love intelligence agency/spy agency stories and want to benefit from the insight of the people working there and take such insight into business, this book is tailor made for you. It takes away mental work we probably would have had to do thinking how I am going to translate all this real combat wisdom to day-to-day success.

Gerald Westerby is the pseudonym of the author. For obvious reasons, he could not use his name. People, from spy agencies, who have used their real names normally leave out a lot of sensitive stuff from their books. Such books go thru strict censorship. Recent book "man in the shadows" by ex-Mossad director Halevy belongs to that category. Totally watered down and blessed by government and his former employer.

The author who is said to have gone to become a famous businessman after retiring from active mossad duty knows how to write for people looking for stuff. The way book is organized itself makes a point or two about the fact that author seems to have become reasonably successful in business. Otherwise, he could not have written so well identifying parallels between his intelligence work and business.

The book is divided into three sections. They are - patience, preparation and persistence. These 3 are certainly necessary ingredients for success. Author narrates many real life scenarios that he was part of under each category. He uses many punch lines and anecdotes to drive home his point.

For example, the author was tasked to meet late Sudanese rebel leader John Garang. Mossad told him to look for an opportunity to meet Garang when Garang came to Europe. The author knowing that Garang never set foot outside of his stronghold in southern Sudan says "given that Garang had not left the Sudan in 20 years, the thought that we should wait until he was in Europe was a bit like waiting for global warming to cook your goose." Point made. Case rested. Author went to meet Garang right in Sudan right under the nose of authorities.

Some other points that author writes with passion which have disappeared from the radar of many managers include planning, silence and concentration. Everyone can do themselves a favor by planning a bit more, shutting their mouth little more and listening more and concentrating on thing at hand than attending to their bling-blings during meetings or while talking to people.

"Silence is golden" - author proves it beyond doubt when they were confronted in Saudi Arabia by an army officer. Even if they had uttered one word, they would have rotten in Saudi jails and died under most horrible conditions. They used presence of their minds and remained silent. Silence makes people uneasy and people use anything and everything to overcome the silence. The military officer who confronted these mossad agents asked them (on his own) if they were people from "National Geographic" and even helped them to transmit secret code out to Mossad. Beautiful story.

Being able to think on your feet is a very valuable quality. This does no mean that you have rush to answer but using this critical faculty is important. Once a Mossad agent was traveling with a fake German passport. It is usual for spy agencies to produce fake passports for their agents which are hard to differentiate. Although the passport was prepared meticulously, the person developing the cover story for the agent had made blunder. Instead of using full middle name, he had used only middle initial (letter H). It is customary for Germans (as mentioned in the book) to use their full middle name in legal docs. So, when this agent landed in some country, the immigration officer was kinda surprised to find a person with German passport with one letter initial than full middle name. He inquired about this apparent inconsistency. Mossad agent thought on his feet and made up a story. His story was that his middle name was "Hitler" and his parents did not want him to be troubled by that name. So, they had chosen to use only middle initial. Delivered with full confidence and convincing body language and immigration officer totally floored. If the initial were to be something else, he would have probably made some other story. This incident is not from this book but is very relevant. I think this one is from Gordon Thomas's "Gideon spies".

Great book. Really hard to find. Out of circulation. Used sell as high as USD 60.