Athletic Career

Learning to Win. Bob’s concepts, beliefs, and skills regarding leadership, creating vision & purpose, and building high-performing teams were initially developed as a 4-year starter at Wichita State, a leading NCAA Division 1 basketball team, where they won the conference championships during Bob’s time with the team.

Bob supported his family and financed his MBA and PhD in business at the University of Gottingen as a professional basketball player in Europe.  He was a 2-time Basketball Olympian, chosen to represent Germany in the 1980 and 1984, where he played against such players on the American team as  Michael Jordan, Joe Klein, and Chris Mullen. On the German National Basketball team, they were three time German League Champions.

Bob was guided by many great coaches, including Tom Konchalski, Mike DePaoli, Harry Miller, Gene Smithson, Rich Shore, and Ralph Klein.

 

“Bob was a big time college basketball player who excelled in big games in part because his focus was making the people on the team greater. As Bob developed as a player in college and pros, it became less about scoring ten points, ten assists, or ten passes. It became more about timing or being in the right place at the right time, and making your teammates believe in you.” -Rich Shore, Bob’s Coach

 

 

 

Bob has applied many of the lessons he learned about winning in sports to winning in business. His approach to growing a business involves transformation management and focuses on shifting an organization from “playing to just be in the game” to “playing to win,” which automatically forces people to make different choices about investment, strategy, operations, technology, sustainability, and talent management. This approach caused Bob to be very successful and advance quickly.

Business Career                       Academic Career                       Athletic Career