Lee Iacocca’s Global Village with Dick Brandt

In Lee Iacocca’s book, Where Have All The Leaders Gone? and there is a story about a man named Dick Brandt who has logged just about more miles in the air than a seagull, traveling to all the corners of the earth during the early days of globalization. Dick is the Director of a program called Global Village at the Iacocca Institute at Lehigh University.  Their mission - to prepare a new breed of global leaders.

We all know that we live in a new world – some call it flat, others say it is interdependent and interconnected – but no matter how you describe it, the fact is that understanding global differences is critical if we hope to solve the myriad of challenges facing our nation and the world. Differences in cultures including such seemingly mundane items like team building, cooking or eating, can have profound impacts on how global managers hire, train, solve problems, implement changes or make investment decisions. Perhaps more importantly, if we want to learn how to survive and thrive in this flat-integrated world, one of the first things we have to learn how to do is communicate with each other.

How do you do that? Listen to how they do it at the Iacocca Institute.

“How can you understand people if you don’t talk to people?”  - Lee Iacocca

Here are some of the topics addressed in this 4 part (40 min) show:

• What are the Global Village and the Iacocca Institute?
• How did the idea come about?
• How do you create a global network of entrepreneurs and what do they want?
• Why are they a very different generation of people?
• What are some of the major cultural differences?
• What do the participants value most?
• What is the most important lesson for corporate leaders?