September 20, 2023: What to do when famous people behave badly, President Ballard rebukes OUR founder, Annotated Book of Mormon, Leadership principles from Airbnb

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Mailbag:

I wanted to say that I love the podcast that you, Sam, and Shawn have created!

Latter Day Lens is what the world needs right now. People need to know that it is okay to disagree. That people can still be friends and love each other, and have differing opinions. Anyway, I love what you guys are doing. We are toe coolest.. aren’t we?

The Thought Provoker:

Russell Brand has been accused of sexual assault and other misdeeds. A woman says that he raped her more than ten years ago. Brand denies the allegations. Despite this, Brand has been dropped by his talent agency and media outlets are distancing themselves from him. This comes on the heels of the news that famous Youtubers Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt were arrested for child abuse. What is the morally correct response consumers should have to these kinds of stories?

Sam: The church clarifies that Operation Underground Railroad founder Tim Ballard betrayed his friendship with President M. Russell Ballard when Tim claimed that the LDS church supported his cause. Glenn Beck attacked the church on Instagram before deleting his post. What do we think of this post? Too far?

Matt: Hot off the presses this week. Richard Bushman wrote a biography of the Gold Plates and Grant Hardy has an annotated version of the Book of Mormon that will make it much easier for people to read and understand. What do you think of these kinds of books? Should we be interested in academic treatments of religious topics? Should we try to make the scriptures more accessible?

Big Question:

There is a story out there about how Airbnb changed the way they managed their company during the pandemic. Airbnb’s CEO eliminated ‘fiefdoms’ and got more involved—and it’s proven to be a better strategy. Instead of giving people “different priorities,” he explained, the top 30 people in the company “work on everything together. We’re not gonna do anything we cannot personally focus on. So if I can’t personally focus on it, we won’t do it. And that means instead of pushing decision-making down, I pull it in.” We’ve talked before about leadership and modeling private organizations after the structure of the church. Is there room for this kind of leadership strategy? I can’t imagine that this could work.