January 7, 2013 Everyone is back. Though the day of the week varies every year, the week surrounding the day is pretty quiet, ‘most everywhere. Christmas Week; New Years Week; though they constitute the end of Q4 and the calendar year, the majority of workplace people are on holiday, even if …
Author Archives: Bob Shank
SIPs
December 31, 2012 Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel, described a Strategic Inflection Point (SIP) as "an event that changes the way we think and act." It is a particular time when a business decides it needs to make important changes in order to stay competitive. Grove says that these moments tend …
Merry Christmas
December 24, 2012 You may not read this before the commemoration. The annual reenactments of the Christmas Story have become cultural; they no longer belong to the religious insiders. Norman Rockwell has joined Matthew and Luke as the purveyors of the image. Ask anyone for the Cliff Notes version, …
Year End
December 17, 2012 If these Monday missives benefit you, read on. If they do not, hit “unsubscribe” now. Next Monday is Christmas Eve; my Point of View next week will be a Christmas message. Today, it’s a family conversation. Imagine we’re in the kitchen, getting ready for Christmas and year-end. We …
The Winner
December 10, 2012 Some times, some things just don’t seem right. We have an internal clock that is culturally set to move into holiday mode during Thanksgiving week. Whatever your religious affiliations, “Peace on Earth and Goodwill to Men” seems like a reasonable proposition, and folks tend to smile – and, …
Another Day at Work
December 3, 2012 Let’s get this straight: you did build that. It’s been a month since the elections, so we’ve moved on from politics, but we never move on from philosophy. In politics, it’s always about candidates; in philosophy, it’s always about ideas. Candidates come and go, but ideas have a …
LifeMastery
November 26, 2012 Written any good books lately? That’s not the typical question; more likely, we ask, “Read any good books lately?” For most people, they would come up speechless on both queries; today, few read… and fewer write. Yet, in the gift-giving free-for-all that surrounds the …
Sharing Faith
November 19, 2102 It sure felt good to be “normal” for a change. Many of my Sundays are spent on planes, not in pews. When not flying, I’m often speaking (so my pastor friends can fly!). Yesterday, I was just Bob, in my spot in the auditorium, in the proximity of friends and …
The Issachar 200
November 12, 2012 I thought it would never be over. We in America live on a four-year cycle, in national politics. Like so many other things in modern experience, the digital, always-connected reality means that constant has replaced occasional in our personal space. Romney ran in 2008… and kept running. Obama …
Vote Your Values
November 5, 2012 You got what you asked for… and, that's Good News. This is a huge week for you, for America, for the World… and, for the Kingdom. By this time next week, a decision will have been made, and a course will have been set. What many are …
An Act of God
October 29, 2012 Who’s responsible? Well, that kind of depends, doesn’t it? If you feel like you’re the victim – harmed by some situation that has a gaggle of human fingerprints all over it – your attorney will probably suggest an answer: everyone. Sue the whole bunch, and …
God Preserve America
October 22, 2012 My Monday readers are a diverse bunch. Mostly Americans, but a growing number of “others.” Adults, but you (all) don’t share a generational affiliation. In fact, the demographic that is expanding quickly for us is the under-40 crowd. If you’re in that First Half contingent, you never saw …
Where is “the End”?
October 15, 2012 Begin with the end in mind. That's pretty sound advice. If you don't know where you're trying to go, how will you know the path to choose, today? Common sense, certainly… but it was Habit #2 in Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey …
Issachar Summit Houston
October 8, 2012 Ten years ago, we launched a new group for The Master’s Program in Dallas. One of my new friends in that group wasn’t a “local;” he had driven up from Houston (250 miles each way; 4 hours on I-45, if you obey the limits) to be there. Over …
Forbes’ List
October 1, 2012 Unexercised capabilities are utterly worthless… and uninvested assets are similarly meaningless. Don’t rush to Google to find a source on those two affronts; I’ll confess “guilty” to both charges. Those comments capture my core values; they are markers in the scope I look through each day …
Who else can you trust?
September 24, 2012 “Say it ain’t so, Joe!” The line came into our cultural history 92 years ago this week. “Shoeless Joe” Jackson was a left-fielder with the Chicago White Sox who played in the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. After the series, charges were made that …
Two Pictures
September 17, 2012 All election, all the time. Welcome to the next 50 days of American reality. The “big choice” will be ours on November 6th: who’s going to get us out of this economic ditch we ran into 20 quarters ago, when we had that fast-lane tire failure, and cut …
Vote Your Values
September 10, 2012 I’ve been writing this weekly piece – column? blog? commentary? what is it?? – for over 20 years. During that time, I’ve written through at least five presidential election cycles. I have watched the quadrennial combat like any interested and participative citizen, but have consciously avoided turning my writing attention …
Contending with the Messiah
September 3, 2012 The Messiah is dead. It makes a catchy headline, doesn’t it? Slipped in between the party patter – the aftermath from the Republican rally in Tampa, and the build-up for the Democratic shindig in Charlotte – is the news from Korea: Sun Myung Moon died at St. Mary’s …
Finish Well Heroes
August 27, 2012 Dear Marketplace Friend, Lance Armstrong: dead at 40. He isn’t really, but that headline might have been easier to handle – for some people – than news that Armstrong had abandoned his efforts to counter charges by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency …
Building Towers
August 20, 2012 It may be a perfect storm: upscale Americans remodeled their family rooms to accommodate the latest/greatest mega-flatscreens… and the late summer schedule offered the Olympics from London, followed by political mudwrestling from Tampa and Charlotte. It’s not too late to get TiVo… We’re all gearing-up; in November, millions …
Taking Home the Gold
August 13, 2012 Dear Marketplace Friend, Well, it’s over; we can all get back to work. It isn’t easy getting anything done in the middle of the Summer. Record temperatures across the USA, nagging unemployment giving less people more to do, and more people with nothing …
Your career life
August 6, 2012 If it didn’t exist, would you create it? Sounds like a deep dive in philosophy, but it was an outtake from a conversation a good friend – and, Master’s graduate – about a ministry we both appreciate. He serves on their board; their Founder is a …
Vote with your feet
July 30, 2012 In 1970, my life moved from the theoretical and academic classroom to the nuts-and-bolts, do-or-die world of the marketplace. My school years had also been years of spiritual formation, through the influence of a good church and the campus ministry of Youth for Christ. Within a few years, …
Running out of cash
July 23, 2012 I'd rather watch it on TV. That would be my response to a number of things, but – for sure – it's my attitude toward the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in London. They're expecting 1 million people from around the world to converge on the United …
All About Him
July 16, 2012 Some nouns don’t do much to depict detail; they cover a broad range of different versions under the same generalization. Example: car. My first had four wheels and an engine, but my ’63 Plymouth had little in common with my modern Toyota, or with the myriad of machines in today’s …
Priority of Commitments
July 9, 2012 The article caught my eye a few days ago, in the June 29th edition of the Wall Street Journal. The headline was provocative – as intended, no doubt: “UTC Helped Build China’s First Military Attack Helicopter.” That wasn’t a marketing coup for United Technologies Corporation; it was a chargeable offense …
American
July 2, 2012 This is a big week, for Americans. The 4th of July is just a date on the calendar for 95.6% of the world’s population, but for the 313 million (estimated) who live in America, it’s a special day in the year. We call it “Independence Day,” and it …
Kingdom Unemployment
June 25, 2012 We're 134 days away from the Decision. For the next 133 days, really smart people will be meeting behind closed doors trying to nail down the key issues, and where their guy stands in relationship to them… By everyone's assessment – leading up to Election Day, 2012 – …
Father’s Day
June 18, 2012 Three weeks ago, I used this medium to open the “Dads & Grads” package that always shows up on the cultural doorstep in June. On May 28th, we talked about the wisdom you could offer to the graduates in your life who are loaded with the facts from their education… …