Excerpt from Trust, How to put “it” back in business
You and I know that we need “it” (Integrity and Trust) more than ever. Good news! I found hope right here, on top of the mountain, in Bethlehem PA. Each year, some of the world’s premier young entrepreneurs gather for a six-week symposium at Lehigh University’s Iacocca Institute. The Institute was founded by Lee Iacocca along with the Global Village Program. His vision was to bring together future global entrepreneurs with existing business executives so they can learn from each other. Does this sound familiar?
Led by Dick Brandt, it’s the only program of its kind in the United States. It’s very difficult to explain just how good the program is without experiencing what they do. However, if you joined them on the first night, you would be awash in all the diversity of colors, shapes, sizes, and dialects of this eclectic group of people. In this environment, no matter how hard you try, you can’t hold on to your prejudices. Everybody here is different. You meet one amazing person after another, some from countries you may never have heard of. Everyone here is also the same. They are here to learn and to teach and they share the entrepreneurial spirit of making the world a better place.
Dick shared with me a moving story of Arab and Israeli students that attended his program. Based on cultural norms, they did not engage with or speak to each other. Over the course of the program, they spent enough time together to find they liked each other and at the end found friendship. They found a way to see through cultural differences and chose to judge each other on character. Dick has a picture of them on his desk with their arms around each other on their final day.
These young people are collaborating and inventing tomorrow’s world. They work together, debate, laugh, learn, and when it’s time to go back to their countries these future global business leaders shed a few tears. Of course they cry, who would want to leave a community like this? Maybe the better question is, why can’t we all live in this kind of business community?
