February 24, 2014 “What was your secret?” Cheri and I live in close proximity to our kids. Some would say, “close knit family;” that’s probably a good description, both relationally and geographically. “Best of friends” captures the nature of our current experience. Both of our daughters are married to great guys, and – over a …
Author Archives: Bob Shank
Happy Holidays
February 17, 2014 We said “Happy Holidays” in December. Did that include today? In our generation, a new service became a growth industry. Aggregators (aggregate: a whole formed by combining several disparate elements) don’t create things; they simply bring things created by others together. Their contribution is the energy found in unifying otherwise disconnected pieces. …
Just
February 10, 2014 Drop the four-letter word when you’re talking to God. Communication is a powerful tool. Relationships depend on communication; if there is no conversation, there is no relationship. Experts tell us that non-verbal communication can be more powerful than words, but a dour look only goes so far. “If looks could kill…” may …
A Big Win
February 3, 2014 Nothing better than a Big Win. Come on: it’s been less than a day since the Big Game. Your mind is stuck in reverse; you hear “Big Win,” and you’re thinking “Yo, Seahawks! What a blow-out!” Some things are just timeless, and I don’t mean the annual NFL grand finale. I’m referring …
Walking Shoes
January 27, 2014 My wife and kids have shoes. They got them from me… "The cobbler's children have no shoes" refers to the phenomena observed when people who are successful at doing something for others don't demonstrate that expertise in their own personal lives. Ten years ago next month, I had an unusual convergence of …
Remembering Dr. King, Jr.
January 20, 2014 A day of remembrance, in a week of remembrance. I’m writing on the holiday set-aside to remind America about the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose contribution to history was his leadership in the war against the idea of racism. Though he was only 39 when assassinated, he …
Reimagined
January 13, 2014 Who’s calling? Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) was a scientist – and, a tinkerer – whose parents were both deaf. He’s most remembered for the telephone (patented in 1876), but he saw it as a source of uncontrolled intrusion and interruption on his scientific work, and refused to have one in his personal …
The Last Six Years
January 6, 2014 What’s new? It’s been a miserable six years, hasn’t it? Historians have attempted to name the storm that moved into place in December, 2007: Great Recession; Lesser Depression; Long Recession; take your pick. There’s no name to give to the last 72 months that will make it feel any better. The Economists …
The Mentor Conference
January 2, 2014 What are you becoming? I wrote to you on Monday – hours before the end of another year – and challenged you to assess your progress in 2013 on three fronts: believing, being and becoming. A year without movement on those issues means a year of possibility, now squandered. If your relationship …
Death Over Dinner
December 30, 2013 Let's have dinner… and talk about death. There's an invitation you're not likely to turn down! In reality, it's a suggestion offered by The Conversation Project to encourage people toward meaningful interactions. Their premise: too often, discussions revolve around trivialities, important to no one, rather than to substantial …
Merry Christmas from the Shank Family!
December 23, 2013 Merry Christmas from the Shank Family! You’re looking at the guest list for Christmas, in our world. Daughter Shannon is on the left, with Bates, and their sons Jackson and Houston. That’s Erin on the right, with Jason and their three: Max, Cate and Avery. We’re waiting on our 12th member: Erin …
A Merry Little Christmas
December 16, 2013 Have yourself a merry little Christmas… Recognized in 2007 as the third-most-recently-performed Christmas song in America, it’s a piece of advice that runs in the audio background of our crowd-intense December wanderings. Written by Hugh Martin, it was introduced in the movie Meet Me in St. …
The List
December 9, 2013 What’s on your Christmas wish-list this year? One tragedy of contemporary American life is the nature of The List. Scan it, quickly: for most people, the things on The List would fit in the trunk of your car, or – in the age of wide screens – the …
December Giving
December 2, 2013 They could all be wrong… but they can’t all be right. When notable people have different opinions about the same thing, the listening world is faced with a choice. If the subject is abstract theory, it can be a game; if the point of conflict is a philosophy …
Celebrate with Gratitude
November 25, 2013 History runs on a straight line; but life seems to be a carousel. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the …
Build your platform
November 18, 2013 Build the platform; launch the payload. Sounds like NASA talk, doesn’t it? It isn’t rocket science: the reason you build a launch platform is to put something into space. Last Thursday/Friday, I was in Vancouver (Canada), speaking at the Entrepreneurial Leaders Conference (go to site for …
Who are we imitating?
November 11, 2013 Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. That was the opinion of Charles Caleb Colton, long-dead British cleric, writer and collector, who was well known for his eccentricities. I guess we can feel good… right? His observation comes to mind as I see the headline over …
American Families
November 4, 2013 Follow the Leaders. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? Leaders go up-front; followers behind. Without someone going before them, most folks slow down, measure their steps and hedge their bets. Risk rises when you are stepping on fresh ground; conscious deliberation is needed when you have no one leading the …
Saved by the internet?
Saved by the internet. Maybe; or, maybe not. Al Gore’s invention (“During my service in the United States Congress, I took initiative in creating the internet…”) has a checkered history. It has become as ubiquitous as Big Macs in the world of 2013, but it’s simply a tool. Gore …
My “Ride”
October 21, 2013 I wonder if they’d miss me? I’m on my way – somewhere over Arizona right now, in a 767 heading eastbound – to convene The Master’s Program groups in Charleston and Charlotte (our two current outposts for TMP in the Carolinas). My Charlotte contingent will assemble on Wednesday …
Disorganized and Organized Complexity
October 14, 2013 Where’s Warren Weaver when you need him? He’s been dead for 35 years, but his perspectives are spot-on for today. Weaver’s degrees – bachelors, masters and PhD, all from the University of Wisconsin/Madison – pointed him toward science as a life-pursuit. His signature work may be his 1948 …
Guidance In Unrest
October 7, 2013 “Why can’t we all just get along?” Rodney King was beaten by four Los Angeles police officers when they stopped him after a high-speed car chase in 1991; the beating was caught on video by a nearby resident, and it “went viral,” before the internet. The …
Pursuit of Eternity
September 30, 2013 We may be on a roll here. Last week, I challenged the thinking of Cal Berkeley philosopher Samuel Scheffler in his play-on-words, emphasizing the “Importance of the Afterlife” to find meaning in what would otherwise become mundane. In his “death ends it all” system, if there are no …
An Afterlife
September 23, 2013 The Importance of the Afterlife. Seriously. You don’t find an article headline like that in USA Today; it won’t be the lead story on Entertainment Tonight; to read beneath a lead like that requires that you’re holding Christianity Today… or, the New York Times Sunday Review. It was …
Lead from Behind?
September 16, 2013 You cannot lead from behind. If Google is any measure of a topic’s level of interest, there are 80.3 million posts that are exploring the concept right now. It’s a hot headline this morning… The idea isn’t revolutionary: the word picture provides more-than-adequate portrayal of the …
Compassion Deficit
September 9, 2013 “Rich people tend to be…” The way you complete that sentence has profound social, political and spiritual implications! David Wolfe is the rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles; in yesterday’s LA Times, he was featured in their OpEd section, under the headline, “The Compassion Deficit.” …
Labor Day
September 2, 2013 Dear Marketplace Friend, Happy Labor Day! Okay, the origins of the holiday are woven into the union movements of an earlier era; when the holiday was proposed – nearly 130 years ago – the majority of American workers were still in farming, factories and mining. Today, …
Quality vs Quantity
August 27, 2013 The debate rages: is it quality, or quantity? What’s the objective? If you live in the “developing world” (our euphemism for billions whose needs are great, and whose supplies are minimal), quantity is the hands-down winner. If you live on one meal a day, anything that fills your …
Ready for Re-launch
August 19, 2013 Most of us spend most of our days, lost in the micro… and blind to the macro. In baseball, there is a strategy called small ball. The idea is simple: lacking any home-run hitters, the team relies on getting runners to first base. A steady flow of successes …
SAT
August 12, 2013 There are just 25 days left… “Until what?” is the reasonable question. It’s months until Christmas shopping closes; schools are already reopening across the country. No NASA launches in the new sequester era. What’s up? There are only seven times each year when the …