Relationships Key to Building LDS Credibility Internationally
Posted on April 10, 2008
Filed Under Act Professionally, Align with BYU and the Marriott School, Grow People, Think Globally
Tags: BYU management Society, ethical, international travel, LDS Church, leadership, moral
Elder Lance Wickman, a member of the Quorum of the Seventy and general counsel for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gave a thought provoking keynote address at the International Society’s 19th annual conference Monday at the Hinckley Alumni and Visitors Center on the campus of Brigham Young University. The conference’s theme was “Meet the Mormons: Public Perception and the Global Church.”
Elder Wickman stated that developing positive relationships with government officials “involves not just lawyers but also general authorities, area church leaders and Latter-day Saints who travel internationally in their private capacity.” He called the BYU Law School annual symposium on international law and religion “certainly one of the most important diplomatic outreach efforts made by the church.” Two questions came to mind as I read this comment:
- What can the BYU Management Society do to help those who travel internationally on business develop positive relations with government officials; and
- Is there some analogous symposium that relates to “growing moral and ethical leadership around the world” that the BYU Management Society could host in conjunction with the Marriott School?
Please share any thoughts you might have on the above.
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Although not directly in response to the question about how BYU alum might develop positive relations with gov’t officials, the following two ideas might spur others.
BYU Management Society Ambassadors: Many BYU MBAs and other alum travel extensively now and give the Marriott School the capability for in-person recruiting in many, many countries where the Church exists and desperately needs strong leaders (India, Europe, etc), but those same countries also represent too great a risk for the Marriott School to be tracking.
Visiting Speakers:
Several months ago, as my father-in-law (BYU MBA ‘83) was traveling once more to Brazil on business, I thought, wouldn’t it be great if there was an easy way for him to network with local management society members in Sao Paolo and also for younger management society members to learn from, be inspired by his experiences? (since I first drafted this idea, he has been to Oslo and Moscow). Another example. A good friend in my ward in Virginia does international biz dev for a bank. The Management Society offers a great place to make those connections (or at the very least, learn more about conditions in those markets).
How it would work:
Each interested chapter would “sign up” to participate in the Visiting Speaker/Visiting Businessperson program. The chapter would assign one of their members’ as a point of contact. Their contact info would be included on the chapters’ website. The chapter would designate one day a week, a specific time, and location [chapel, restaurant, club] (ex: Wednesday nights, 7:30pm, Belgrano Chapel). The time is set aside for this express reason. Then when a BYU alum is traveling to the UK/Brazil/Norway/etc they contact the chapter and setup. An email is sent out to the members of the chapter and those that are interested attend. The networking opportunities would be very great (some care would be needed to prevent these visits from becoming sales pitches).
Some ideas, that if done correctly, can do a world of good by using the EXISTING international travel of Management Society alumni. It would not be much of a stretch to cultivate some government relationships based on these ideas.
It pains me that we have many, many BYU alumni in Santiago, Mexico City, Geneva, and London TODAY but the networking connections are never created because business travelers typically don’t stay for Sunday church and because it is fairly taboo in our church to talk business at church.
I think these are great ideas and will pass them along to the International Steering Committee. Thank you for your comments.