Denver Catholic

18 NOVEMBER 12-25, 2016 | DENVER CATHOLIC Business and Stewardship C atholic business leaders should consider a culture of stewardship. Pedro Arrupe, former Superior General of the Soci- ety of Jesus, popularized the phrase for those following an Igna- tian path: "Men and women for others." Stew- ardship is not only a concrete concept for all Christians, but a powerful culture for businesses. WHY A STEWARDSHIP CULTURE? 2+2=5: Employees who are "for others" are great teammates. They strive for the best outcome for clients and work together because they truly care. LOW EMPLOYEE TURNOVER: Employ- ees recognize the value that they add, the quality of friendships, and are proud to be at the fi rm. INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER IMPROVES: Character stays consistent through- out the week. Stewardship becomes a way of life and does not turn oƒ . GREATER EMPLOYEE RESPONSIBILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY: It is easy to delegate when employees are eager to add value. Business owners struggle with control, but when they fi nally relent they create a better organization. TIPS ON CREATING A STEWARDSHIP CULTURE FLATTEN CORPORATE STRUCTURE: Form committees and task forces to spread responsibilities and tackle issues. Employees thrive with responsibility and accountability. 360° REVIEWS: Teammates should formally review each other. The reviews should weigh heavily by their supervisors in overall performance evaluation and compensation, especially bonuses. CELEBRATE SMALL SUCCESSES: 'We Love Mondays at Innovest' is a weekly communication that I send to the entire fi rm. Only positive announcements are highlighted, with special recognition of great service to clients or colleagues. Awards and rewards are also given throughout the year for great "Service to Others." ENCOURAGE PHILANTHROPY: Consider forming a committee to determine service work on behalf of the fi rm and fi nancial stipends to charities. Volunteering generates team building, comradery, and a great sense of accomplishment. CHARACTER FIRST: Make strong character the most important characteristic of a new hire. If your fi rm has low-character employees, replace them. The best source of high character candidates comes from your current employees, clients, and friends of the fi rm. HIRE ONLY STEWARDS: When interviewing, look for a multitude of demonstrated examples of stewardship in their life. Arrogance and narcissism are the opposite of humility. IT STARTS AT THE TOP: Leadership must be involved in philanthropy and the community. Getting involved in the Catholic community is easy. BUILD COMMUNITY IN YOUR FIRM: To avoid any fi nger pointing between departments, camaraderie must be developed within the fi rm. Innovest sponsors a weekly lunch for employees, but only if they attend the whole lunch hour. Further, participants are not allowed to Perspectives Catholicism embodied: "The Pivotal Players" L ooking for some uplift after this tawdry election cycle? Some inspiration for tackling what lies ahead? A good way to enrich Advent? Examples of sanctity to help you be the mission- ary dis- ciple you were bap- tized to be? Then let me rec- ommend Bishop Robert Barron's new DVD series, Catholi- cism: The Pivotal Players. Pivotal Players is a follow-up to Bishop Barron's immensely success- ful, ten-part mega-series, Catholicism, the most compelling presentation of the symphony of Catholic truth ever created for modern media. Key fi gures in Catholic history appeared throughout the original series to illustrate this truth of the faith or that facet of the Catholic experience. Now, with Pivotal Players, six of the most striking personalities in Catholic history take center stage, the adven- ture of their lives serving to deepen our understanding of the "faith once delivered to the saints" (Jude 1:3). The six are Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Thomas Aquinas, John Henry Newman, G.K. Chester- ton, and Michelangelo Buonarroti: the reformer, the mystic, the theologian, the convert, the evangelist, and the artist. Two are doctors of the Church – and a third may be one day. Several of them inspired successors of St. Peter; another told a pope oƒ in no uncer- tain terms. Two were Englishmen and converts from Anglicanism: one, will-o-the-wisp slight and the other gargantuan; one the quintessential Oxford don, the other, the quintessen- tial Anglo-eccentric genius. One grew up a wannabe knight errant before his abrupt turn into radical evangeli- calism. Still another was arguably the greatest genius in human history, his extraordinary talents ranging across sculpture, painting, architecture, poetry and other fi elds. Four were Italians (if you'll permit the anach- ronism for an Umbrian, a Sienese, a sort-of Neapolitan, and a devout Flo- rentine). Each of them was the human analogue to what astrophysicists call a "singularity," someone to whom the old rules of spiritual gravitation didn't apply. And they shared something else in common besides the passionate intensity of their Catholic faith: each lived at a time of crisis for the Church, and each helped the Church address that crisis creatively while remaining true to itself. Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena lived at times when institu- tional Catholicism had become com- placent, losing its evangelical edge. By creating something utterly new in Catholic life – the mendicant reli- gious order dedicated to evangeliza- tion – Francis inspired in the Church a new Gospel radicalism centered on the joyful experience of salvation. By persuading (perhaps better, shaming) Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome from his political exile in Avignon, Catherine of Siena made it possible for the papacy to be again the center of unity for the entire Catholic world, as Christ intended it to be.« Thomas Aquinas, for his part, grafted the "new learning " of Aristo- tle into Catholic theology in a creative synthesis that gave the Church con- ceptual tools that remain powerful today. In doing so, he helped create what we know in the West as higher education, even as he showed the Church how to incorporate the best of the« "modernity" of his time into its intellectual and spiritual life without losing touch with the truths it had long possessed as a bequest from the Lord. Michelangelo lived during that moment of sometimes-brash human assertiveness we call the Renaissance; his theologically-driven art (which Bishop Barron explains in perhaps the most scintillating part of Pivotal Players) enriched the classically-in- spired humanism of his day by mar- rying it to the biblical account of the human person. Newman and Chesterton, closer to our moment, were key fi gures in crafting a Catholic response to the scientifi c revolution and the other dramatic changes that were reshap- ing how we think about things – and imagine our place in the scheme of things – during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That each of them did so in wonderfully winsome prose helped demonstrate the con- tinuing vitality of the Catholic mind and spirit in an increasingly skeptical age, even as they bequeathed to the 21 st -century Church models of apol- ogetics that remain cogent at a time like ours, when skepticism has often hardened into cynicism, or just plain boredom. There are important things to be learned from each of these God- touched human personalities for the challenges Catholicism faces in the post-modern world of the twenty-fi rst century. Kudos to Bishop Barron for bringing those things to our attention in a gripping way. The Catholic Diª erence George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. GEORGE WEIGEL Guest Column Richard Todd, Principal and CEO, Innovest Portfolio Solutions RICHARD TODD

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