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Tough Things First
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Indhold leveret af Ray Zinn. Alt podcastindhold inklusive episoder, grafik og podcastbeskrivelser uploades og leveres direkte af Ray Zinn eller deres podcastplatformspartner. Hvis du mener, at nogen bruger dit ophavsretligt beskyttede værk uden din tilladelse, kan du følge processen beskrevet her https://da.player.fm/legal.
Wisdom from Silicon Valley’s longest serving CEO, Ray Zinn
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80 episoder
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Manage series 167730
Indhold leveret af Ray Zinn. Alt podcastindhold inklusive episoder, grafik og podcastbeskrivelser uploades og leveres direkte af Ray Zinn eller deres podcastplatformspartner. Hvis du mener, at nogen bruger dit ophavsretligt beskyttede værk uden din tilladelse, kan du følge processen beskrevet her https://da.player.fm/legal.
Wisdom from Silicon Valley’s longest serving CEO, Ray Zinn
…
continue reading
80 episoder
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×Sometimes we need to check with ourselves to see if we are positioned well for unforeseen troubles. In this Tough Things First podcast with Ray Zinn, has the keys to self-reliance. Rob Artigo: Good to be back. And I’ve got a copy of Zen of Zinn Two, one of your books here in front of me, and I flipped over to page 160 and I found something you wrote up on self-reliance, and what I’ll do is I’ll just mention the setup here to this and then we’ll go through, there’s seven steps, great list of things to think about, but basically it says, “Self-reliance should be the goal and objective of all of us. This means to have the following.” So I’ll go with number one, “A viable source of providing the needs of ourselves and family.” What do you mean by that? Ray Zinn: Well, you have to have a way to assess who you are and that assessment, if you’re listening to those around you. They’re telling you, people are communicating with you all the time and you’ll get that self-assessment as to who you are. Rob Artigo: Okay, how about number two, “A sufficient savings to sustain us through difficult times.” I mean, this is just about being prepared for downturns. Ray Zinn: Yeah, that’s your life insurance. Not necessarily death insurance, but life meaning that that’s your insurance of a profitable life. If you have a significant savings to take you through the bad times because we’re all going to have bad times. In fact, statistically they say that 50% of our times in life are going to be bad, meaning they’re difficult. And so we have to be prepared for that. If there’s a 50/50 chance, obviously you got to be prepared for that, and that’s having that runway to be able to sustain yourself through a bad time. Rob Artigo: There have been some pretty good advice out there from people about how much savings you should have having an emergency fund as part of that where you just have some money set aside for an emergency. I remember one commentator was saying, having a thousand dollars cash that will keep the lights on if for some reason, keep the lights on and food on the table long enough to recover from something. That could be a natural disaster or just the sudden loss of employment. You have to sustain yourself. And that of course depends on how large is your family, how young or old are your kids, and that kind of thing. It seems like sound advice to be diversified to the point where you do have some cash on hand just in case. Ray Zinn: Well, I have a rule of thumb that you should have at least nine months of savings, meaning that you can sustain yourself for nine months, not living high on the hog like you were while things were running good, but maybe when in your cutback mode when you have to really cut back that you should have nine months of cutback savings in place, nine months minimum. Rob Artigo: And you say also along with that, you’re going to have to have some savings of some real food. So you have number three is sufficient food storage to sustain during a crisis. Ray Zinn: That’s that cutback thing I was talking about. So part of your cutback to minimize how much cash you need to have if you have a food storage, if you have an ability, maybe you’ve got to live off beans for a while, beans are still nutritious and while they’re maybe not the best thing that you want day in and day out, at least they’ll sustain you. So having wheat beans, flour, other things that you can fall back on in your storage that you’ve already saved up for as opposed to just hard cash will help sustain you through difficult times. Rob Artigo: I know you exercise every day, it’s the first thing you do every day, but having a regular exercise routine. Ray Zinn: That’s so true. In fact, I was thinking about that this morning as I was getting up and getting going as you and I. I exercise the very first thing, the very first thing I do other than say my prayers is I start exercising. And so that’s a very valuable aspect of my daily survival as you would is getting in that at least one hour of exercise. And it has really helped me at my advanced age. I look at my classmates around me and a lot of them are passing away, but I can just know who they are. I can see they really didn’t take care of themselves all that well, so they basically have shortened their lifespan. Rob Artigo: Yeah, you’re showing some really energetic longevity, which is proof that what you’re saying is true. Also, just like you said, taking care of yourself is eating nourishing meals, eating healthy. Ray Zinn: Well, that’s part of what I talked about and just having a well-rounded life is other than having the food storage, you got to be able to eat it. So whatever you store up, make sure it’s nutritional food storage and that it will sustain you. And so there are a lot of things online you can go to find about having what’s a good food storage type product, both that’ll store well as well as being nutritious. In fact, I’ve known people who had hard times, but they had a good food storage and they actually became healthier while they were living on their food stores than they were when they were just eating regular. Rob Artigo: Yeah, I can imagine that. This is a big one for me is a good night’s rest, usually about eight hours a night. Ray Zinn: We’re not preaching anything new here. We do need to rest. We do need to be able to take that time off and just get that natural rest during the day. I say seven to eight hours, nine hours is what we would consider a good restful habit. So again, to be healthy, you need to rest your body and that means to be able to shut down, close your eyes and get that nice rest. Rob Artigo: The last one here, number seven, “Self-improvement, like a good education.” I know that you try to learn something new every day. That’s another part of your philosophy, so I can see why this would be a priority for you in self-reliance. Ray Zinn: Well, we’ve talked about this, but it’s part of loving the things you hate. In other words, if you don’t like something, go after it. Find out what it takes to like it. And of course, if you persist in doing something, you will be more likely to succeed at it. Discipline, as I define it and is defined in our book, Tough Things First, is doing things you don’t like doing and doing it well. That’s discipline. So doing what you don’t like doing and doing it well is loving the things you hate. Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, our listeners can go to ToughThingsFirst.com if they have questions or comments and also they can follow you on X and Facebook and LinkedIn and of course your books are available. Tough Things First and the Zen of Zinn series, that’s Zen of Zinn 1, 2, and 3.…
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Tough Things First
1 American Chip Manufacturing: New President New Plan? 10:44
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10:44The reemerging American semiconductor industry is a little nervous about what President Trump will do regarding the CHIPS and Science Act, but CNBC reports Trump is unlikely to roll it back . In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn says only a robust American chip sector can thwart Chinese power grab through chip dominance. Rob Artigo:… you ran Micrel as CEO, a semiconductor company, for 37 years. So you have some knowledge of how- Ray Zinn: In Silicon Valley. Rob Artigo: In Silicon Valley for 37 years. So this is right in your wheelhouse as far as your interest factor here. But, if you remember it was two years ago, a little bit over two years ago that President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act, which was $53 billion in funding to bring semiconductor supply chains back to the US and create jobs to support American innovation and protect our national security. One of those issues was that China made it a goal to have 90-plus percent. I can’t remember what you said the other day, but it was 90 something percent of the chip manufacturing would be on mainland China. 2025, and that apparently hasn’t happened. Ray Zinn: Well, that’s the reason we were talking about this is because this is the first of the year, we’re into 2025. And it was actually 20 years ago, it was in 2005 China came out with a policy that they would fabricate 95% of all of their chips that they need for their business within China. And at the time in 2005 when they made that comment I remember discussing that with some of my cohorts and I said, the only way that they could do that is if they took over Taiwan. And that shocked me, I mean that they would say that because they’re basically saying we’re going to take Taiwan. Probably within the last five years, that’s all we’ve heard about is China wanting to take over Taiwan. Now they don’t say it’s because of chips, but that’s my understanding and my feeling is that that was the reasoning behind that policy. If you look at how important semiconductors are, it goes to that CHIP Act that Biden signed, that 53 billion to encourage semiconductor companies to move their manufacturing back into the US. If we look at what prompted that, it is because of China’s view of, even though they haven’t come out and physically said it, taking over Taiwan. One of the most important countries in the world for semiconductor technology and manufacturing is Taiwan. And they produce, I think, somewhere around 20% of all semiconductors are produced in Taiwan. So let’s look at the importance of semiconductors. Semiconductors are at the heart of electronics, and electronics are at the heart of the consumer economy. They’re in everything, refrigerators, washing machines, things that we’d never thought would need them, even hand mixers and microwaves, almost everything in your home now has electronics and they’re only going to become more important. So go semiconductors, so go electronics. So go electronics so go the world as you would. So the most important item in my mind of GDP growth around the world is semiconductors. And so this is an extremely important item and topic. That’s why Biden pushed this CHIP Act is recognized the importance of semiconductor technology. Now, our country, the US never dreamed that countries like China would become so dominant in electronics at the time because… When that happened, by the way, let’s look at the time period, we’re talking about the ’90s. So it wasn’t until about 30 or something years ago that China really started eyeballing semiconductor technology. And they bought all the old used equipment, obsolete equipment, and they started putting together and encouraging through financial aid, China encouraged semiconductor manufacturing in China. And so China has been trying to become a Taiwan type country for semiconductors for the past 40 years. And so that’s why we’re talking about this is to talk about this commitment that China made that by 2025 they would be a dominant player in semiconductor manufacturing. There’s a company in China, mainland China called SMIC, that’s Serum, Mary, India, C for China. I call that semiconductor manufacturing in China, that’s how I denote that acronym of SMIC. So SMIC semiconductors made in China as part probably the most important semiconductor manufacturing company in China, but they haven’t been successful as Taiwan, even though they’ve had access to the same equipment, they’ve had access to the engineering and so forth. They’ve hired a lot of engineers out of the US to go and set up that semiconductor manufacturing company in China. And so China is having a very difficult time succeeding. So where they wanted 95% production by 2025, they’re only doing about maybe 30 or 40% of their chips that they need are manufactured in China. So they’re way off their goal. And so, that leads me to believe that semiconductor… I mean, that Taiwan is going to be a very important aspect of China’s policy to be more 95% in China, as you would, if they did acquire Taiwan. So that’s just something for us to note here at the beginning of 2025 and to keep our eye on to understand why I believe China is so persistent in wanting to take over Taiwan is because of chips. So I hope that the Trump administration continues to support chip manufacturing in the US in some way, somehow. We need to make sure that we protect Taiwan and that we also protect semiconductor manufacturing in the US. Rob Artigo: Yeah. And we could wrap this up just by noting that the story that I’m looking at here, where I got the update on the $53 billion is that, this story from August was saying that 30 billion had been sent to 23 projects in 15 states, which is a lot, and they projected 115,000 manufacturing and construction jobs. But that the rest of the funds would be allocated by the end of 2024. Do you think that with… There’s going to be some DOGE related cost-cutting and things like that in the government, but is this likely to be an area that Trump will see as continuing the opportunity? Because they’re projecting in this story that by 2032 the US would have 30% of the world’s leading-edge chips manufactured here in the US. Ray Zinn: We want 95% actually here in the US. I’m hoping that somebody in the Trump administration listens to our podcast and understands the importance of supporting the semiconductor technology in the US because the US claims to be the most important economy, the most powerful country in the world, and we’re not going to be if we don’t stay as the most powerful semiconductor company in the world. So any of you out there listening, make sure you get to your legislative leaders and promote making sure that the US is the dominant player in semiconductor technology in the world. If we do, God willing, we will continue to progress, our GDP will continue to grow. But if we don’t, God help us. Rob Artigo: Yeah, yeah. I agree. That’s important for people to act and make sure that we financially support these industries because we can create a lot of opportunity that way. Thanks, Ray. I’m looking at toughthingsfirst.com, that’s the place to go if you want to ask questions of Ray. You want to make some comments there, you can do that. And you can get more information there and you can also comment if you’d like, leave questions, give some feedback for the book, Tough Things First, and the Zen of Zinn series, 1, 2, and 3. You won’t regret it. Thanks, Ray. Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.…
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Tough Things First
A cognitive bias that occurs when someone overestimates their knowledge or abilities in a particular area can wreak havoc. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn explores ways to avoid it. Rob Artigo: I had been looking around for different subject ideas and I came across a term called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It’s about cognitive bias that occurs when people with limited knowledge or skill in a certain area overestimate their abilities. And then I asked AI to define it because it called some information from around the web, so that’s my source on the definition, but I was able to see that this is accurate. So the definition goes like this. “The Dunning-Kruger effect is named after Cornell University psychologist, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, who first described the effect back in 1999.” So it’s been around a little while. It’s new to me. “The Dunning-Kruger effect can lead to mistakes, poor decision-making and mistrust from others.” And this is why I’m getting into this because in business I know that you’ve had to deal with creative teams at low levels, medium levels, and high levels of getting things done and I’m sure that every once in a while you’ve run into some of these situations. Because it can lead to mistakes, poor decision making and mistrust from others, it’s based on the idea that you don’t know something, you also don’t have the ability to recognize you don’t know it. Is that something that you … specifically that thing. If somebody that you’ve run into is doing something and they’re not doing well at it because they refuse to recognize that they don’t know what they’re doing, have you seen that? Ray Zinn: Yes, I have. It doesn’t happen often, but you don’t know what you don’t know. The clue or the key here is to know what you don’t know and take that into consideration. Sometimes you have to do something that you’ve never done before. I remember the story about this fellow who caught his arm. This is in southern Utah. He was hiking by himself, and he got his arm caught and he couldn’t get his arm out of that crevice. And so he tried for days to try to get his arm removed and nobody had rescued him yet. And so took his knife and he cut off his arm to save his life. He’s not a surgeon, but he had to do what he had to do to save his life. Sometimes you have to do things that you don’t know or understand in order to preserve yourself or your organization. Rob Artigo: Yeah. Ray Zinn: So again, don’t be afraid to make a decision if you have to. If you don’t have to make a decision, then don’t. And wait until you have more knowledge or more information. So the key here is to make sure that you have to make the decision levers. I have to make the decision, and so therefore, I will use whatever knowledge and experience I have. If you make a decision that you didn’t have to make because you’d lacked the experience or lacked the knowledge, that’s just stupidity again. That’s again, cutting off your arm to see if you’re a good surgeon. That wasn’t why he did that. He needed to save his life. None of us have all knowledge and all experience. None of us have that. We all lack to some degree, some degree of knowledge and some degree of experience in all situations. Rob Artigo: Guess it also is a matter of it coming down to being realistic about your knowledge base instead of being in denial about what you don’t know. If it’s something that you’re faced with, like the guy cutting off his arm, which is a move that is remarkable and its life-saving, but he was forced to do something that he didn’t know how to do. I imagine that kind of situation, like you said, it does come up where you may have to do something that you don’t know how to do. But if you recognize it and you have that, you go, “Okay, I don’t know how to do this.” I guess it’s kind of like you buy an IKEA desk and you bring it home and you go to put it together and you look at it and you go, “This is way more complex than I thought it would be. It might be a good idea to read the instructions instead of winging it,” right? So if you recognize that you’re limited in your ability to do that, then you’re halfway there. You’re halfway to finishing. Ray Zinn: Well, the key again, Rob, is to recognize what your decision is and what the consequence is of that decision. If the decision is critical, like you either cut off your arm or you die and you decide you’d rather live, then even though you don’t have a surgeon around and you hope your knife is sharp enough, you just have to act on what you have. And so recognizing your limitations in a decision is key. Not letting your ego get in the way of your decision making. Whenever your ego gets in the way of your decision making, I can promise you it’s going to be a bad outcome. Recognize when your ego is involved, recognize when you lack that experience and that knowledge, and then act accordingly like this fellow did. He said, “I’m not a surgeon and I can’t find one right now. I can’t go into the local hospital and have my arm removed. I’m going to have to take matters in my own hands.” And without that knowledge of a surgery, he had to sever his arm. Now, would’ve been done as good as if a surgeon had done it? Probably not, but he saved his life. And so you’re at the mercy of your ego. If your ego gets in the way of your decision-making process, I guarantee you you’re not going to have a good outcome. Rob Artigo: Yeah, what it says here about the expert … So if you do have somebody who’s an expert in the area, it says that they tend to have greater meta-cognition, meaning that they know what they don’t know and are aware of their knowledge gaps. When they’re faced with a situation, they are automatically prepared to be upfront about it. And I think that one of the pieces of advice that you’ve had about making creative teams more successful is to say that you should admit this to your teammates so that they know. Ray Zinn: Yeah. As I said, every time your ego gets in the way, you’re going to have a bad outcome. And so the best decision makers are the ones who understand their limitations, understand their lack of cognitive ability, experience, whatever. Those are the ones that make the best decisions. And so having lived on this earth a few decades, I’ve seen both. I’ve seen whenever a person who has that cognitive ability to understand what he doesn’t know and the limitations, and he seeks the help, and he seeks that knowledge that he doesn’t have, they make the best decisions. And it’s those individuals whose egos get in the way of their decision-making process, and those are the ones that usually have a bad outcome. Rob Artigo: Ray, our listeners can reach out to you at toughthingsfirst.com if they have any questions or comments. Obviously they can do that. They can also rate the podcast on their favorite platform. Keep the motivated listeners out there coming back to us on a regular basis and keep growing the podcast. At the website, toughthingsfirst.com. Podcasts, blogs, links to information about Ray’s books. Tough Things First, the Zen of Zinn series, which is one, two, and three, and the upcoming The Essential Leader by Ray Zinn. Thanks, Ray. Ray Zinn: Thank you.…
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The opposite of paralysis by analysis is making a resolute decision in moments while others stew. But how do you get there? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses how famous business minds get right to it without hesitating. Rob Artigo: Well Ray, let’s talk if we could, a little bit about leadership and leaders in business at really any level, how we can make decisions faster. I have some examples here. I actually picked this up from a Forbes article that was the inspiration behind this podcast. So for reference, people can check out Forbes and look for, How Top Entrepreneurs Make Tough Decisions In 5 Minutes. So there’s a bunch of examples, and we just pulled a few of them out just to have a conversation about it. Rob Artigo: There is something called the 10-10-10 rule, and this is where you project your situation into the future and you end up knowing what to do. So Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, he swears by the 10-10-10 rule. So he says, “When you’re faced with a tough decision and a tough call,” he says, “what will I feel about this decision in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years?” An approach, I guess to looking down the road and saying, evaluating using some expertise where this might go and that helps him make his decisions. What do you think of that process? Ray Zinn: It’s a method. It’s a technique. You could go with a 5-5-5, five minutes, five months and five years, which is the one I use. The 10-year, 10-minute, 10-month, 10-year is I think a little long. So I go with the 5-5-5, 5 minutes, 5 months, 5 years. But they’re all basically the same. They say haste makes waste, look before you leap and all that sort of thing. So there’s look before you leap is haste makes waste, okay. If you leap too soon and then regret your leaping, you’re going to sustain some injury and haste makes waste. So if you can see how they both counter each other. Rob Artigo: Next one is trust your gut. This is one that you’ve spoken about in the past, which is that if you go through this process and maybe you do your 5-5-5 that you were just talking about, and then you’re sort of on the fence still. And you go, “Okay.” Then you asking yourself, “How do I feel about this?” So Mark Cuban is a guy who trusts his gut. He calls a term that’s used around this as the two-minute magic that takes your five-minute first window to two minutes. If a decision takes less than two minutes, he can make it on the spot, which means that if you know that’s good, then you can do it without overthinking it. Is it possible to overthink a decision and get paralysis by analysis? Ray Zinn: Sure. I mean there are downsides to every one of them. I mean the more data you have, the more it will help you with your decision. Obviously, less data you have will hamper your decision unless you’re lucky. They say that our decisions are right 50% of the time, which means we’re going to be wrong half the time. So in my experience, the best leaders are the ones who make decisions 70 to 80% correct, and 15 to 20% incorrect compared to the average, which is 50% correct. So that’s a difference between a good leader and a not so good leader is how good are the decisions when you look back upon them. As I said, a good leader should be right 70 to 80% of the time, you’re not going to be right 100% of the time, not possible, but you can be right more than 50%. Rob Artigo: Sheryl Sandberg, who was one of Meta’s COO, founders obviously of Facebook, she talks about 70% and she calls it this 70% solution. So it’s like take a punt and see what happens is one of the lines in here, Sandberg doesn’t wait for perfect knowledge. She goes with a 70% rule, 70% of the information, and then if she feels sure about it with 70% of the information, that’s good enough to pull the trigger. Sounds like that pretty much goes along with what you were just saying. Ray Zinn: Let’s ask ourselves the question, why are some people able to be 70% correct as opposed to the average being 50% correct? How is that? How do you get to that point where you’re 70% correct? That is where you have that knowledge. There’s no substitute for knowledge and experience. You need both of them. And so the more knowledge and more experience you have, the better you can make a decision. Shame of it is the people who have the most experience are older people like myself, we’re by nature, have more experience. I’ve got what, 60 years of experience in running companies, and yet I’m compared to somebody who’s running or had been only a CEO for a couple of years. You’d have to say, “Well, gosh, with the experience, you should be able to make better decisions.” So it’s hard to make a good decision if you haven’t had to make one. The more opportunities you have to make a decision, the better you are at making correct decisions. So it just takes time and experience. You want to give yourself the opportunity to make a decision. If you never have to make a decision, then you’re never going to be wrong because you never had to make a choice. So what you want to do is with your experience, just make better decisions. If you’re my age and you’re making 50% bad decisions, you haven’t learned much because you can flip a coin and make a decision. Flip, okay heads this way, tails that way. What you want to do if we’re speaking to people of all ages on this podcast, is you want to take opportunities to make decisions, find ways to make a decision. If you don’t have to make a decision, that’s bad. You want decisions, you want the ability to solve a problem, take the opportunity to make decisions. I did that, which proved very, very, very useful for me over my 60-something years of running companies, is I’ve just forced myself to make a decision and then learn from that decision. As they say, “If you make a mistake and then keep repeating that mistake, think you’re going to get a different outcome, that’s insanity. If you learn from your mistakes, then you will grow. You’ll become better at it. You’ll know what information to go and grab.” So the people who are making good decisions, I should say 70% good decisions, they are utilizing the experience of themselves and utilizing the experience of others. They learn from others, they learn from themselves and they grow from that. They don’t keep repeating the same mistake over and over. Rob Artigo: And it sounds like that also, this last piece of the advice that comes from this article from Forbes says, “Decide to decide.” You’re making a commitment to make the decision, which helps you focus on it. Is that fairly true? Ray Zinn: Oh, yeah. If you don’t decide to decide, you never decide. Rob Artigo: Right. You decide not to decide. Ray Zinn: Right? So what I do is I make a decision before I have to make a decision. So I decide before I have to decide. Now, I know that sounds strange, but that’s what I do. I decide before I need to decide. So in other words, I’ve already said in my mind, “If this circumstance comes up, here’s what I’m going to do. If we get a certain loss in a revenue, then I’ve already made the decision how I’m going to handle that.” If I have to cut back my expenses, the first thing I’m going to do, and this is before I have to make it, is I’m going to see if we can go with a shortened workweek. In other words, shortened, people work less hours. Then if that doesn’t work, then what I do is I said, “Okay, I’m going to cut back salaries.” In other words, we’re going to take a temporary pay cut. And then my last decision is going to be layoffs. That’s the last thing. I’m going to do all the others first before I do the layoffs because I want my employees to feel comfortable. I want them to know that they have a job that’s more important than a layoff. So you want to have either a shortened workweek, or in fact, people prefer a shortened workweek over or a pay cut. The second thing, of course, they’d rather have a pay cut than a layoff, and then the last thing, they want is a layoff. So that’s the way I decide before I’d have to decide. Does that make sense? Rob Artigo: Our listeners can reach out to you, Ray, with their questions at toughthingsfirst.com. Conversation is ongoing. We have podcasts there, blogs and links to information about Ray’s books, Tough Things First, and the Zen of Zinn series, 1, 2, and 3, and the upcoming book by Ray Zinn. Thanks, Ray. Ray Zinn: Thank you.…
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It is called the Department of Government Efficiency and it doesn’t even exist yet. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray discusses the hope of D.O.G.E. and why it will require some very heavy lifting to see real change. Rob Artigo: A lot of changes have come up in the last month or so, and we’re going to have a new president and we’ve got a lot of things going on. So one of the things I wanted to look at based on all this experience you’ve had in the corporate world, and talk a little bit about this organization called DOGE, which is the Department of Governmental Efficiency, which Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will be taking over that, or I guess they’re in the early stages right now of making sure that they’ve got that organizational structure in place. But the idea is to cut the deficit and also reduce government waste in the process. And the numbers they’re talking about is one and a half, $2 trillion is I’ve what I’ve heard. They’d like to try to do it in two years. Is this a pipe dream or is this something you think can happen? Ray Zinn: Well, sure it can happen. So let’s talk about that a little bit. I always thought, and I’ve lived a long time here on Earth, and I always thought we had that department already. In other words, I thought that we were always trying to reduce government spending. And I know there are pork barrel projects all the time that come up. And they’re there to make that congressman or senator look good to his community, to those that he serves. Because he’s getting these little perks for his area. And it looks like that they’re working for their community as opposed just to serving on committees in the Congress or whatever. So I think it’s gotten out of hand in the sense of the word that that government continues to bloom, get larger and larger and larger. And unfortunately it has become very, very expensive. We have to decide how much government do we really need? I live in Helena, Montana, and I think half the people in Helena work for the state of Montana. And so they are jobs and there people are being employed by the government. And so the debate is how much good does the government really serve in the large scheme of things. So whether or not you’re a Republican or Democrat, you have a different view of government spending. Technically, I guess, or policy-wise, Democrats are for a larger government and the Republicans are for smaller government, given that the Republicans are now in control of all three branches or two branches, Congress and the executive branch, or legislative and executive, then they’re going to do what they promised on the campaign, which is they’re going to reduce government spending. And that’s what Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk have been chartered to do. Rob Artigo: So you mentioned Elon and Vivek. What do you think about these two guys who have a track record of business success like yourself? What do you think of these guys being the ones tapped to do it? Ray Zinn: Let me back up. First, I want to talk about something else for just a minute before I jump onto that. When I ran Micrel, my semiconductor company for 37 years. And there were times when we had to do cutbacks, we had to do shortened work weeks or we had to do reduce salaries or layoffs. That was never pleasant. It was never, never pleasant. Because the people that were either had a salary cutback or laid off, they weren’t happy about that because now they had to go find a job and that increases unemployment. The government is supposed to be balanced. In other words, you’re supposed to not spend more money than you take in. And so right now we’re spending more money than we’re taking in. There has to be some control or you go out of business. I think that the concept of cutbacks or reducing spending is necessary because we spend it to an excess. In the last four years or maybe the last eight years, we’ve spent far more money than we were taking in. If we want to have reduced taxes, that’s less revenue for the government. And so there’s got to be give and take. There’s got to be some reduction in the spending unless you’re going to increase your revenues, which is through taxation or other means, tariffs or whatever, you got to find some way to increase your bottom line as you would. If you’re going to spend more, you got to take in more. So I think we’re at the point where there is too much spending and not enough revenue. Now Democrats, again, are more for increasing taxes. They say tax the rich, they’re not paying their fair share. They always said that. I can remember since I can read and write that the government has always said, or the people, some of the government anyway, says that “We’re not taxing you enough.” In other words, “You’re not paying your fair share.” And so that’s always been the battle that one side who wants to increase spending always says, “We’re not taxing you rich guys enough.” With that being said, we can talk about Vivek and Elon. Rob Artigo: These guys seem like they’re pretty good choices, but what’s your take? Ray Zinn: Well, both of them are from industry and so they’re obviously familiar like I am. I’m from industry and have lots of experience in running companies, and when you run a company, you learn to run a company. And if it’s a profitable organization as opposed to a non-profit, you’re trying to increase your profitability. And to do that, you have to either increase revenue or reduce spending. Now right now, they’re looking at, again, reducing spending because they’re talking about having tax cut, no taxes on tips, no taxes on social security, no taxes on overtime, and that’s just reduced revenue. So if you’re going to reduce your revenue, you have to reduce the spending commensurate with that. If you’re working for the government, you’re not going to be happy to lose your job. If you’re one of the ones that’s going to have your job eliminated. Elon and Vivek mean they’re choices. I mean, are they the best choice? Don’t know. They’re good choices, but we will find out. We know that both of them want to be involved in the Trump administration and they get their name known or they want to accomplish something good. I’m sure that they’ve convinced themselves that they’re going to do something good. And we’ll see. We’ll see what kind of good they do. Some of the pork barrel ones that have been promoted as potential ones to reduce are a bit silly. The monies they’re given out are really not necessary and should be eliminated. Now, they’re not huge amounts of money. They’re not like billions or trillions, but they’re hundreds of millions in many cases. And they all add up. So getting rid of the pork barrel ones are going to be very, very important. If it’s in your territory. If you’re a congressman or a senator and it’s in your territory, you’re not going to be happy about that because that’s revenue that people that support you are not going to get. In most cases, these pork barrel or less-than-contributional projects should be eliminated. But that’s again, politics is, as they say, is dirty. And so there’s no clear winner or loser. There’s give and take. You’re going to increase unemployment when you cut back all these jobs, there is going to be less revenue for those opportunities as you would. And so if you’re being impacted, you’re going to be unhappy, impacted negatively if you lose your job or lose your project or whatever. Some of these are very, very silly and probably should be eliminated. I contribute a lot to different organizations philanthropically. And some of the ones that I contribute to aren’t as profitable in my mind as they really should be. For example, I contribute philanthropically to the Helena Symphony. Now, not everybody goes to a symphony and appreciates what that music is. And so my contribution to that, is in my mind, I’m helping the fine arts and we need to be cultured and so forth. So I felt okay about that, but obviously I’ve got a lot of friends who don’t go to that symphony. That’s not their thing as you would, and so they think it was a silly thing for me to contribute to because they don’t enjoy fine art. It is not easy. These are difficult decisions to make, and depending upon which side of the fence you’re on, you’re going to be happy or you’re going to be unhappy. Rob Artigo: And like you said, if you have, I remember the old speaker of the house, Tip O’Neill, probably remember him from, I’m pretty sure the ’80s. He wrote a book, a short book about politics, but it was really good, called All Politics is Local. And that’s what it comes down to is you have people from both parties and then some independents that are going to have their home districts impacted. And that’s where you’re really going to have to work some political magic because it is going to be tough to get some of these things passed even if they’re ridiculous. And like you said, I think the symphony is a good cause because you get to support the symphony, and symphonies generally don’t make a lot of money. But at the same time, it’s a nonprofit and it’s cultural and you want to keep it, but you also have to figure out, okay, so how do I do that and make it all work and come together and still get cuts. And also do, I guess you can call it harm reductions, so that you can keep the unemployment situation down and also try to impact people as little as possible while making a big impact, if that makes sense. Ray Zinn: Well, the people that are in the symphony, they’re earning a living. In other words, they’re getting paid for performing in the symphony, and so you’re helping their employment as you would. Not everybody agrees that that’s an important aspect of life is to have the symphony. I could see both sides. I can understand how they feel if I were in the orchestra and I would say, “Well, I’m told that we’re no longer going to have it.” then I got to go find another job. Or if I’m contributing to the symphony or helping the symphony, then the people say, well, but you could be helping out some poor person, somebody who’s got some serious psychological problems or some medical problems. You should be using that money to help them. So it’s difficult. And I have to make that decision on a regular basis as to who I choose to help, even though it is from my income and my financial structure is what’s helping. It’s none of their business. I’m using my money. But they’re arguing with me saying, but you could use it for this other more important part as you would. So you’re not going to please everybody. You’ll please some of the people some of the time, but you’re not going to please all the people all the time. Rob Artigo: And what it comes down to is it’s a human issue at its core because it does impact people. So it’ll be interesting to see how this all comes out, where they can make improvements and what they have to say after the experience. Because maybe they’ll determine that they could have done a lot of different things, a lot of things different, and then maybe you’ve been more successful. I don’t know, and I hope it goes well. Anyway, for the listeners, as always, you can reach out to raise in with your questions at toughthingsfirst.com, continue your education and the conversation with all the podcasts, blogs, and links to information about Ray’s books, Tough Things First, and the Zen of Zen series one, two, and three, and an upcoming book we’ll let you know about very soon. We appreciate you listening. Thanks again, Ray. Ray Zinn: Thanks a lot, Rob.…
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The long and the short of the 2024 Presidential Election cycle and what it tells us about where we are as a country. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn gives his take. Rob Artigo: It’s been another long and exhaust… It’s weird, it’s been an election cycle that was both very long as it tends to be, two, three, four years of people running, and then we had this switch up with President Biden stepping out of the race and Kamala Harris coming in. And so, we had this short race head-to-head between Harris and Trump. It’s been very expensive, but also truncated in a very unusual way, that I don’t think any of us ever experienced before in our lifetime. So, I know you’ve seen a lot of big changes in presidential politics in your years, and every four years we see something and sometimes we don’t see change, but we see the end of an election cycle. So let me ask you, since we have a situation where, as is always the case, one side wins and one side loses. So, some people are happy and some people are unhappy. Some people are nervous. When people think about a change in president, it can cause some anxiety depending on your point of view. What do you think about this? Are we in a situation where we should be concerned or should we just be diligent? Ray Zinn: Well, it’s like a football game. You have two opposing teams. There’s going to be a winner and there’s going to be a loser, or it wouldn’t be a game. I hate to call the election a game, but basically it is. And so, if your football team loses, you’re going to be very unhappy. I’ve seen some very nasty riots occur after a particular football game, and I’ve seen some that went very smoothly. Most of us know when we have a contest, whether it be baseball, basketball, football, whatever, soccer, that we all know, at least we should know, that there’s going to be a team that’s going to win, and there’s going to be a team that’s going to lose, and that’s just the way it is. If your team wins, you’re going to be very happy. You’ll be jubilant. If your team loses, you’re going to be disgusted and unhappy. Just recently, if I can recall, the coach of the Chicago Bears was terminated because he’s now at the bottom of the league and he lost against the Detroit Lions. And there was some nasty things said. And they accused him of not running the team properly and making bad decisions on certain plays and so forth, and it was very nasty. It was a very nasty thing. Of course, if you’re the coach and you get terminated, you’re not going to be happy about that. And there are people second guessing about that. Should he have been terminated or should he not have, and so forth. So, that’s a recent thing that’s happened, and just been on the news in the last day. Rob Artigo: That was a bit of a surprise too. Ray Zinn: Pardon me? Rob Artigo: That was a bit of a surprise too. For me it was a surprise. I hadn’t been following it that closely, but this is the time of the season where you don’t usually see the firings. Usually you see them at the end of the season. Ray Zinn: No, not always. You get terminated right in the middle. We had, when John Kennedy was assassinated, you had Lyndon Johnson take over. You could say that was a surprise. So, I was a young married person at the time when President Kennedy was assassinated, and I didn’t think much about who the vice president was at the time, because you don’t think much about the vice president, you’re really voting for the president. All of a sudden, we no longer had John Kennedy, we had Lyndon Johnson. And [inaudible 00:04:10] be very concerned because we didn’t really know much about him, didn’t know what he could do, what he couldn’t do. It happens. It can happen in the middle of a term, when a political leader either quits or dies, or has something happen, and then somebody else takes over, that’s always an unknown. And so, that happened in this election, is that effectively Joe Biden was convinced not to run. They were deciding to go with the vice president, let’s say if Joe Biden was unable to run for some physical reason, I guess that’s one of the thoughts. He was not physically able, but then you have the vice president who takes over. And so, that’s the way they ran it was, since the current president can’t run for reelection, then the vice president runs for reelection in his stead. And so, that started the whole mismatch about, there’s no primary, and we didn’t get a chance to vote on who was going to get to represent the party. And so, a lot of that happens. And a lot of- Rob Artigo: And it’s a lot of money too involved in that short campaign. Obviously, both sides spent a lot of money. Ray Zinn: I’m not surprised, Rob. Given the short time they had, and they had to make their point, that I wasn’t surprised that they spent a ton of money. There’s a lot of over that. You could say, “Oh gee, spent it wrong.” Second football game again, “Oh, you called the wrong play. You shouldn’t have done the kick-“ Rob Artigo: Monday morning quarterbacking. Ray Zinn: Yeah, exactly. So, we can argue that until the cows come home. Did they spend too much money? Yeah, if you lost, you spent too much money. It’s like, yeah, if you decide to go for a field goal and you missed, you can say, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that. Should have gone for the first down.” We’re always second guessing what we should have done, would’ve, could’ve, should have, we always say that. And so, this whole thing about blame doesn’t do any good. Just like if you got in a car accident, you said, “Gosh, if I’d have only been five minutes later, I wouldn’t have gotten in the accident.” There’s always the what ifs, what if this, if that, what if. It is what it is and we have to deal with it. Okay? Rob Artigo: We have Kamala Harris’s campaign went for 15 weeks, but like I said when I did the intro, these campaigns can go very long. They can go two years, three years. They’re already talking about congress person from Northern New York, or I think she’s from the Bronx, whatever, but that she’s considered a contender for 2028. And you go, we haven’t even inaugurated the new president yet, and we’re already talking about contenders four years down the road. Is it helpful that we have campaigns that start right when the other one is over? Ray Zinn: Well, every football team has two or three quarterbacks. They back up for each other. And so there’s the first string, second string, third string. And so, obviously the first string is supposed to be the better than the third string. We always get into that. Oh gosh, should we have better follow-up quarterbacks, backup quarterbacks, or should we just have a quarterback? So, if you say that you’re only going to play one quarterback the whole game and no backup, then what if the quarterback gets hurt? Then what do you do? So, this debate can go on and on. It doesn’t do any good. Until you’re faced with that eventuality, you’re arguing over a molehill as you would. Rob Artigo: Yeah, right. A game that’s already been played. Ray Zinn: Right. So anyway- Rob Artigo: Before we go, any thoughts off the top of your head that reflecting on the election? Ray Zinn: Well, our elections are based on what they call commons consent. And so, we all agree that if the majority want to go a certain way, then we have to go along with that. I happen to be opposed to marijuana, but when they legalize it, I have to go along with it. I’m not going to smoke it myself because they’ve legalized it, but I’m still unhappy that they legalized… And not in all states, but in several states, they’ve legalized it. And even though I’m not the common consent says, it’s been okay. Now, there’s going to be some downsides with doing that, but measured with the upsides. But I live in a country where we abide by what we call common consent. We vote, the one that gets the most votes is the one that wins. And then, we have to sustain that. We have to uphold the common consent decree that comes about as a result of it. So, it is like as we mentioned earlier, it’s like a football game. If your team loses, you’re going to be very unhappy, but you’ll get over it because you’ll be hoping for the next game and then hoping the next game you win. But not everything goes with the way we want them to go. They talk about… And I wrote amusing about this recently, about despair. The first aspect of despair is denial. And we’ve seen that in this particular election process, is that the opposing team that is in denial in saying, “Oh, this is not really true, that somehow the vote counts wrong,” or whatever. We’re in denial. Then after we get over denial, then we go into what we call anger. We’re upset and we yell and scream and pout and shout and whatever. Don’t invite our family over for Thanksgiving or blah, blah, blah. We’re go on, and they’re not happy. People see happiness and despair cannot coexist. So if you’re in despair, you’re not happy. And so if you’re grateful, you’re happy. And so, you need to be grateful that you live in this great country and that we have a great constitution and a great government system, and you have to accept the outcome. The outcome is not always going to be in your favor. It’s going to be in what we call common consent. Whoever has the majority in that vote is the one that’s going to succeed, and we’re going to have to abide by it for all of us. We are all Americans, and we have to pull together and we have to survive together, and we have to deal with what we have. If you’re a Democrat and you fell angry and had despair and upset and whatever over this, just grin and bear it. Just make lemonade out of the lemons. And if you’re a Republican, be kind and gentle and understanding for those who aren’t happy about the outcome, and be accepting with that and put your arm around them and love them. So my advice is we live in a great country. Let’s be grateful. Let’s be happy. Let’s just make lemonade out of lemons wherever it happens. Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, our listeners can join the conversation at Toughthingsfirst.com. All the questions are welcomed. I know that you get them and you read them, and they can follow on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Of course, some people- Ray Zinn: X. Rob Artigo: Yeah, some people just call it by its real name now, so they can pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things first, flagship book of Tough Things First podcast and the website. And you can also check out the Zen of Zen, one, two, and three. You won’t regret it. Thanks, Ray.…
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It’s possible to be honest only sometimes, which makes integrity a full time job. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discussing how honesty and integrity are different and how they may impact your reputation as a leader and coworker when applied disproportionately. Rob Artigo: Well, you have talked a lot about honesty on this show, also integrity, but we’ve never really looked at them side-by-side, comparing one to the other and seeing where there’s overlap and how they are different, so let’s talk a little bit about that. Let’s start off with what your personal attitude is, what your personal definition of honesty is. So what does it mean to you, honesty? Ray Zinn: Being truthful. In other words, being correct in what you’re saying, not being deceptive. So that’s what honesty is. Honesty is do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? That’s honesty. Rob Artigo: And integrity. Ray Zinn: Integrity is doing what’s right when no one’s watching. In other words, is your heart being honest or correct, as you would? Are you doing the right thing for the right reason? Integrity is, for example, if a store clerk gives you back more money than what you should in your change, integrity is then reimbursing the amount that was overpaid or obeying the laws of the road, as you would, staying within the speed limit, not taking something that doesn’t really belong to you or on it, back to the honesty thing. So integrity is really where is your heart? What is your belief? For example, if you’re dishonest, you could tell the truth periodically, or you might obey the speed limit periodically, but you still don’t have integrity being that you’re not always honest or always doing the right thing for the right reason. So integrity is a longer period of time, whereas honesty could be just for the moment, as you would. For the moment, I’ll be the speed limit, or for the moment I’ll be truthful, but integrity is over the long haul. In other words, how honest are you over the long haul, as you would. So that’s the difference. Rob Artigo: Okay. Well, let’s take a look at the two together, honesty and integrity. How are they different? Ray Zinn: Honesty could be just for the moment, you’re honest for the moment, you’re obeying the speed limit, for the moment you’re paying your fair share of taxes, or maybe for the moment you might reimburse somebody for overpaying you, or maybe you’ll pay the correct amount for the job done. Integrity is over the long haul. It means that you’ll every day, every week, every month, every year, you’re being honest. So honesty could be just a short term, whereas integrity is a longer period, meaning that you have integrity, you’re always honest, you’re always doing what’s right. Rob Artigo: Can we be honest but lack integrity in different ways? Ray Zinn: You could obey the speed limit in town because there’s more police around, but then when you get on the freeway, you may drive faster than the speed limit. So you could be honest in some respects, but not honest in all respects. Or it might be that you’re not stealing your neighbor’s fruit trees, fruit off the tree, but you might kick their dog or whatever. I mean, so honesty is more at the moment, okay? Rob Artigo: And I guess it doesn’t necessarily mean that something has to be against the law or a written law. For example, you mentioned the fruit tree. Let’s say you’re walking down the street, and a lemon has fallen off a tree, and it’s laying on the sidewalk. Really, you’re not really stealing, but maybe you’re not particularly acting ethically if you’re just going to take stuff without getting the permission of the owner. Ray Zinn: Yeah, that’s a good point. Let’s say there’s fruit on the ground, as you would, there’s no sign that says, “Please have any of the fruit that’s on the ground.” So should you pick it up and take it with you? That’s an interesting point. You’re saying, “Well, but I don’t want to see that fruit go to waste, and so I’m just going to take it with me, and then hopefully that’s not being dishonest because I’m not trying to be wasteful.” But what if somebody just was walking by, and there was no fruit on the ground, but they shook the tree, made the fruit fall on the ground, and then pick it up? “Oh, I’m just picking up the fruit that’s on the ground.” Or you’re walking behind him, you say, “Oh, that guy just shook the, look at the fruit on the ground.” It depends upon how fine a line you want to draw between what’s honest and what’s dishonest. If the neighbor doesn’t complain, and you pick it up, I don’t know. I mean, that’s a good point. Now, I mean the neighbor can’t force you to pick up that fruit. So if you were to walk on by and not take it, then that’s being ethical or honest. I mean, you’re saying, “Well, but I don’t want to see the fruit go to waste.” But that’s not your fruit to waste. Okay? That’s the neighbor’s fruit to waste. So again, that’s a good corollary as to what’s considered honest and what’s considered dishonest. So it’s kind of like the story about at work, do you take the paperclip home? Do you take the pencil home or the pen? Is that ethical? The answer’s no to taking it home. Or to use, or let’s say rather than you going down and buying paper for your printer, you just take some that at work. You just take some of that paper from work. Rob Artigo: Take a ream. Take a whole ream home. Yeah. Ray Zinn: Or not, maybe you don’t want to look that evil, so you just take part of the ream, as you would. Rob Artigo: Degrees of evil. Ray Zinn: You left a cover there, so at least you just took a few pages, as you would, and that’s dishonest. Okay? Rob Artigo: Yeah. It’s also dishonest when somebody asks, “Did you do it?” And you say no. Ray Zinn: Exactly. If you said yes, you took the paper because they asked. Rob Artigo: You could make it, right? I mean, if they ask, and you said, “Yes, I’m replacing it.” You could just make up for it. I mean, that’s how I’d like to wrap up the podcast is to say, Ray, is maybe something we’ve realized down the road a week or two or even a year, we realized maybe we sort of lied and maybe we didn’t practice good integrity in a certain area, or we weren’t really honest on something. Can we make it up down the road somehow? Ray Zinn: Well, I write a lot of musings. These are quotes and stuff I do every day. I write and post them on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and so forth. I post these, and I’m very careful that if I’m looking like I’m quoting or look like I’m taking something that is already known to be somebody else’s quote or work, I feel compelled to acknowledge that saying, “This is an old saying.” Or if I don’t know the author, or, “This is a quote by Dwight Eisenhower or something.” I’ll say that, I’ll recognize that because that’s the correct thing to do. If I quote something, if I make a statement about a quote, and I don’t know who it was, I’ll say unknown author or something. So people don’t think it’s mine. And even if I try to reword it, so it’s not exactly like that person’s quote, I feel bad about it. I still say, “I’ve reworded this, but it’s similar to, as you would.” So that’s having integrity and being honest, okay, is to do the right thing for the right reason, as you would. Depends upon how honest you want to be, and your daily dealings will depend upon how you respond to different situations where you find a dollar on the pavement and say, “Well, I don’t know whose dollar this is. What do I do?” Well, you walk into the store and say, “I found this on the pavement.” And if somebody comes by and says, “Did anybody find any money?” At least you’ve been honest about it. Or they hold it for you for 30 days or a month or whatever, I mean a year, and then they give it to you. That’s being honest, but just to pick it up and say, “Well.” What’s that? There’s a saying. Rob Artigo: Finders keepers, losers weepers, Ray Zinn: Right. Finders keepers, losers weepers. Yeah, that’s the saying that most people use. They see a dollar, and they pick it up. Now, if it’s a penny, I’m not going to go in the store and say, I found this penny on the ground. If anything, I’ll just pass it up. I’ll just walk by it. I won’t pick it up. Rob Artigo: Yeah. Plus, if you find a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck. Ray Zinn: There you go. That’s it. That’s another saying. Rob Artigo: Yeah. Well, Ray, let’s wrap this up. I just want to let the listeners know they can join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. If you have questions, you can get them to Ray. Also, if you have comments, you’re always welcome to join us at toughthingsfirst.com and put that there. Follow Ray Zinn on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, his first book and the Zen of Zinn series. You won’t regret picking these books up, and we look forward to introducing the new book to you. Thanks, Ray. Ray Zinn: Thanks a lot, Rob.…
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1 AI email etiquette. How much is too much AI? 17:06
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17:06It is getting easier to instruct AI tools as a shortcut for sending out emails and social media posts, but when is it a misleading crutch? Ray Zinn discusses changing AI use and how to recognize the gray areas of using AI and calling it your own work. ( Watch Video Podcast… ) Ray Zinn: Good morning there, Rob. Rob Artigo: Well, this is a special edition of the Tough Things First Podcast. If you’re listening, you can check out toughthingsfirst.com, find this podcast, and right next to it there’s a link that says video. So you could click on it and watch it if that is your choice, or listen to it now and watch it later, whatever. While preparing this podcast, Ray, I logged into Microsoft Copilot, something I’ve been kind of experimenting with in a few different ways. And I asked it to write an email about this podcast, which is about having AI or ChatGPT write your letters, emails, or social media posts. So I logged into Microsoft Copilot and I just said, “Can you write an email for me?” It said, “Yeah, what’s the topic?” And I told it what the topic was, and then what it said was… Here’s the email. Subject line is, “Join us for an insightful podcast on AI and email communication exclamation point.” And it says, “Hi recipient’s name, we are excited to invite you to our upcoming podcast episode where we dive into the fascinating world of AI-driven email communication. Our special guest, Ray Zinn, the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley history, will be sharing his invaluable advice and insights.” And then it has the date and time and it says, “Put the link here.” And it says, “Look forward to having you with us. Best regards, your name.” So what I’d really like to do is ask you just based on that, I mean, that was a very quick thing. If I didn’t want to craft it myself, seriously, Ray, it would’ve taken me just as long to write the email myself and do that same thing rather than having the AI do it. But let’s have your reaction to me going through the process of having something else create the email for me. Ray Zinn: Well, for one thing, it says AI, so there’s the starting point. I mean it’s already doing kind of an advertisement for artificial intelligence. And it’s just interesting that AI really is a buzzword. We’ve had ways of doing emails that way before cut and paste. I’ve used cut and paste for, I don’t know, 50 years. Rob Artigo: And people don’t think of that as being AI, but that’s basically what that is. It’s using an algorithm to work something out for you. Ray Zinn: Yeah. So my point though is that I’ve pulled up old emails and just edited a few things and sent it back out. So if the topic is general in nature, like, “I’d like to invite you to my birthday or my anniversary or whatever.” That’s pretty straightforward because we have these group lists that we can call up and do a blast email blast as you would. Because this is an election year, I get probably 10 email blasts a day, and they’re all quote-quote AI crafted as you would. And I can tell it because they look bland. Okay. Rob Artigo: Okay. Ray Zinn: And so it doesn’t sound like anything that comes across as being personal to me as you would. The other day, I received a letter, actually a card, but written on it. It was handwritten by the governor of Montana who was thanking me for all the things I was doing in the community. That meant more to me than getting an email blast that just says, “Thank you for your support, blah, blah, blah.” And so handwritten, I mean, if I get a handwritten birthday card or a handwritten note from someone, that means more to me than if they just… Because I can tell if it’s crafted by AI or not AI, but by some generic email blast as you would. So can AI help? Yeah, sure, it can help. It depends upon what you’re wanting to do, what your goal is. So if you just wanted to notify everybody that there’s going to be a meeting at such and such a time without having to sit there and type in that information, then you can do that with various, what they call abbreviated… You can type in, for example, M-A-T, MAT, meeting at time. You can have that just type in those three letters and it’ll craft, if you already have a predefined thing you want to send out. It’ll do that for you. And then you can just type in the time or the date. So this is really what it is. As I’ve mentioned, AI has been around for a long time. I mean, it’s not… it’s just a buzzword referred to as AI. I remember Al Gore claiming he invented the internet, which was another misnomer as you would. The internet in a sense has been with us for many, many years and long before Al Gore did it. So what we do is we have these little buzzwords, these little things that we call smart this, smartphones, smart speakers, smart ovens, smart refrigerators, smart appliances. And they’re just nothing more than just a bunch of buttons that you push and it’ll then create whatever you want. For example, if you have a certain kind of washing machine load you want to do, you can have a predefined, you can program it as you would. It’s the same thing with your phone. You can program your phone to do different things or your computer. And as I mentioned, this sort of thing has been around a very, very long time. I can remember back in 1978, 79 timeframe when IBM, what they call their… Oh shoot, I forgot the name of it, but it’s like a Skunk Works type thing. It wasn’t Skunk Works, but it’s had another name like Skunk Works, where they were playing around with doing a little personal computer. Now, IBM Corporate, they’ve been building computers since I was in college back in the 50s, but they were mainly for big corporations, and they were large expensive systems. They’ve taken up the size of a room. And so the Skunk Works Group down in Boca Raton, Florida, worked at IBM, wanted to come up with this little PC. And what’s interesting is that Heathkit made a PC, wasn’t called a PC, but it was a computer that you could put together, but that was a hobbyist thing. And all IBM did basically was take that S-100 bus, that Heathkit hobby thing, put it together with their own BIOS, and came out with a personal computer. Now, granted it had a keyboard and a display and all that sort of thing, but it was nothing more than cobbling together stuff that was already there. And so when we talk about AI, you’re just cobbling stuff that’s always been there, making it a little more convenient and easy to use. But artificial means not real, fake as you would. And so fake intelligence, that doesn’t even sound good, does it? Rob Artigo: [inaudible 00:09:04]. Ray Zinn: And again, if you’re just trying to knock out something, trying to speed up your day as you would, you can cobble together an email blast as you would by just having these predetermined emails that you’ve written over the past year or two and save them in your file and then have them named something, a certain name. You call it up and you just change the dates and times and so forth, or maybe a name or whatever, and you can do the same thing. So- Rob Artigo: Let me just let you know that I actually thought of this topic when I was sales pitched by Adobe. And this isn’t a complaint about Adobe. Excuse me. I like their products, but what they asked me was, did I want to use their AI tool to write my emails? And what they suggested was that if I get a lot of documents, what this tool would do is it would scan the email for content and it would cr… I mean a document for content, and then it would craft an email about the content for you. And I said, “No, thank you. I can write my own emails.” What bothered me was the fact that they were interested in scanning my document and then crafting an email based on that. If I’m doing that, it probably means I’m cheating the system and not reading what’s in the document. So if I don’t know what’s going on, and I put my stuff in the email based on what the AI suggests, and I send it out to everybody, other people will understand what the AI pulled out of the documents and its attitude or whatever you want to call it, toward what was in the document. But I won’t say what I believe is inside the documents. And so that kind of bothered me. What about the ethics Ray? Let’s wrap it up by asking about the ethics of it. If I don’t say this is AI, if it’s something that I created, but I don’t say it’s… I mean if it’s something I used AI to create, whether it’s an email or a long letter or something that’s typewritten, but I don’t really know what the content is because all I did was sort of do a cursory read after I had it create the message, am I behaving ethically? And am I really just setting myself up for failure down the road when somebody asks me, “Hey, you said in an email, blah, blah, blah.” And I don’t remember writing it because I didn’t, AI did? Ray Zinn: Well. I think we’re giving AI more glory than it really needs. Rob Artigo: Maybe. Ray Zinn: When you do a cut and paste, if you’re using that term, again, you’re not creating something from scratch, you’re just going back to an old email and you’re pulling out some information and then doing a paste, being putting it back into the current one you’re doing. Is that ethical? And so whether it’s cut and paste, and that’s all it is. If you think about what AI is doing, they’re capturing tens of thousands of files and then creating something from you from those files. You can do the same thing just from your files, the documents that you keep. When you ask a computer or some other smart device, “What’s the date of Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday or whatever?” It just goes and searches millions of documents and brings back the information. It’ll also tell you the source of that information. It says, “According to Wikipedia or according to such and such and such source.” It’ll tell you what that source is. So the ethical or the unethical part is that if you don’t say what the source of your information is, to some degree, that’s unethical because you’re pulling from somebody else’s information and using it as your own. So how authentic is that? Or how ethical is that? That depends upon what you’re trying to do. If you’re writing a original book and you’re copying somebody else’s work, then that’s not ethical. So when you copy somebody else’s, if they’re going to pull an email out of the universe and then say it was yours, that to some degree that’s unethical because it’s not original. So AI, if we know what… If something is specified as AI, then we can definitely say this is not original. So whether it be a video that looks like you, that’s not original. And so it depends upon what we’re trying to do, who we’re trying to fool as you would. So that’s the bottom line about what’s ethical and what’s not. Rob Artigo: Yeah, and we talked at a previous podcast about what is copyrightable, and we know that portions of whatever your work is that you used specifically for… that you used AI to create instead of your own creative juices, if you will, then you’re not able to copyright that material. And that’s the reason why, because it could end up being somebody else’s material in the long run. And I think there’s nothing wrong with saying, “Hey, I used AI to create this.” And you could say that. You could just do a little disclosure, say, “I used AI to help me out with this because it was a long thing, but I read it and I agree with it.” So you could do that, and then that would kind of help you work it through. Anyway, thank you, Ray. Great podcast, I’m glad we could do this on video. And I’d like to let the listeners know that you can join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Your questions and your comments are always welcome. Follow Ray Zinn on Twitter, Facebook, I should say X, but I guess they still call it Twitter, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. And of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, and the Zen of Zinn Series 1, 2, and 3. Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.…
Getting ahead at work is not complicated, but it does require effort. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses the concept of hiring from within a company, and how to be the person who moves up. Rob Artigo: Good to be back. So let’s talk about promoting from within a company instead of seeking talent from elsewhere. Micrel, which you ran for 37 years, had a reputation for people wanting to stay and then anybody who left tended to want to come back at very high, what you called the boomerang rate. So people coming back to the company because they enjoyed the environment where they worked. That means that people are looking potentially for advancement within the company and they would like to be considered. Are you a guy who preferred to promote from within or seek fresh talent from outside? Ray Zinn: Well, again, it depends upon what the requirement is. If we’re in a new product line, a new area, and I don’t have that talent within the company, certainly I’ll look outside. Or if somebody leaves the company and there’s talent within the company, I would definitely promote within. I always look for within before I look for without, as you would. And so, the key here is letting people know within the company that they have a chance to advance themselves and that would promote their wanting to work harder or change their emphasis and scope of knowledge and industry as you would by knowing that the company promotes and fosters within the company as opposed to without. Rob Artigo: Yeah, and what I think about is if I’m an employee for a company and I see an announcement that a position is opening up, happened to me once in radio where I was looking for specific responsibilities on a full-time basis. I went over and visited at a time when a person was retiring, and what it did was it moved the chessboard around a little bit and it opened up a spot. Turned out I was the first choice for the position, which was great and flattering because I was there. But I was also engaged and made myself visible and had expressed for a long period of time my desire and commitment and as well as my feelings about the company, which was that I really wanted to work in this role and they came right to me. So in talking to people who see an announcement at the company, how do they stand out and let people know that they are interested, that they should be considered for that position in that promotion? Ray Zinn: That’s easy. I mean, by letting people know how much you want to stay at the company and that’s the key is that- Rob Artigo: Like loyalty? I mean, would you say in a word, loyalty? Ray Zinn: Or, finishing your projects on time, acting happy, smiling, using positive vibes, as you would, circulating around the company, letting people know who you are. Just being a good person. I mean, that’s what companies want. Companies want good people, and so you just got to be a good person. We talked earlier in another podcast about on integrity, you want to have that. You want to be known as being honest and have integrity. Also that you’re a person who wants to help and contribute. When you greet somebody, say, “How can I help you?” Just be friendly. Be a very friendly, open, happy person. Rob Artigo: And if you’re real serious, Ray, I imagine that it would be a good idea to be able to occasionally show somebody that you’ve done some professional development. Say, hey, I took this class. I mean, look, in some places where you’re very publicly forward in the positions, in sales for example, maybe having… You’re bilingual, you’re multilingual, you have a couple of languages. But I know you are fluent in Spanish. That if you went out and you said, “Hey, look, I’ve been studying Spanish for a while.” That’s an asset maybe that you weren’t hired with but you developed over time and now you can tell them, “Hey, look, I’ve been working on this and I got the certification of four years or whatever of training in Spanish and I just completed that. I wanted to let you know that this is beneficial for that.” But I mean, professional development I imagine would be helpful in letting people know that you’re serious. Ray Zinn: Well, most companies offer a advanced course compensation. And so if you can see those individuals who are taking advantage of that, providing it’s a course and a study that will help them within the company, that should be a good indicator also that this individual is looking for advancement and be promoted from within. So again, there’s another source of finding out who’s willing to go the extra mile by those who are trying to advance their knowledge and education. Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, great conversation. We’ve had a real good session and I do appreciate it. Join the conversation at ToughThingsFirst.com. If you have questions for Ray Zinn, you can provide them over at ToughThingsFirst.com. Your questions and comments are always welcome. Follow Ray Zinn on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and of course pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First and the Zen of Zinn series and then coming soon, Essential Leadership. Thanks, Ray. Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.…
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Tough Things First
Entrepreneurs accomplish a lot by themselves. Fierce independence is a common trait, but why not work smarter, not harder? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn details why going it alone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, you write so much it’s hard to keep up, but one thing that you did right recently was, “To succeed, we need the support of others. Friends, customers, mentors, families and associates.” And these are in the home, these are at work and these are in the community, people that you bump into regularly at ACE Hardware, for example. So you say that you need to get this support, why do you think that that level of support is necessary for success? Ray Zinn: Well, because we don’t live on an island, no man is an island. We need the help of others. We are very much a society of people. We don’t do things all on our own unless we want, as a show, a TV reality show called Alone. Unless we want to be alone. We need the support of others. Going back to that TV series called Alone, I mean, you’re left out in some wilderness area and you have to survive on your own without help from anyone. And then when you give up, when you say, “I’m going to tap out,” and you dial this number, and then they come and get you and you’re off the show. But what’s interesting is that I’ve watched that series a number of times and almost half of the people that tap out are missing their family, are missing their relationship with others, and that’s interesting that half of them just can’t be alone. They can’t do it on their own, even though they’d like the money if they could survive that a hundred days on their own, it’s difficult to do. There are very few people that can literally be on their own as you would Alone, and so the purpose of that particular musing was to talk about how we need to nurture that relationship because we need that relationship with our friends, our neighbors, our community if we’re to be successful, even in a company. I mean, if you’ve heard on the news how certain leaders are, they’re not well liked by those in the office. I remember when I was running [inaudible 00:02:44], HR, Human Resources, would interview the employees that were leaving and ask them if they could be open with us and tell us why you’re leaving. Three-fourths of them said they were leaving because they didn’t like their boss. Think of that. I mean, three-fourths, that’s 75% of the people that leave to go to another job are doing it because they don’t like their boss. If you want to retain people, if you want to keep them working at the company, then you have to treat them correctly, and so it’s not just an eight-hour job and when you go home with your family or when you go out into the community, you are still who you are, and if you want to have a good relationship, then you need to nurture it. You need to make sure, because if you have a person that you want to mentor you, that person’s not going to want to mentor you if you’re not willing to listen, if you’re not willing to, if you don’t nurture that mentoring relationship or a customer. I remember one time we had a customer was unhappy with the product that we were shipping them, and so when we went to visit with them, see what we could do to straighten the situation out, they took our parts and threw them in a wastepaper basket and said, “That’s what we think of your company.” It was a shock. That was a real eye-opener and I went, “What?” So we weren’t nurturing that relationship and obviously that customer quit doing business with us. Then I had to dig into, do a post-mortem and find out why that relationship fell apart, and I found out that it was that interrelationship between the salesperson and that company was the problem. So it wasn’t necessarily the company, it was the salesperson that was that relationship with the company. Rob Artigo: You touched on so many points there that are related to this. You mentioned nurture, that was part of the get the support from you mentioned friends, customers, mentors, families, associates, those people as a whole. You want to have that support and this awareness is accomplished by nurturing these relationships. And you focused on nurture, which is really the bottom line here, is you have to be aware of these relationships and you have to nurture them because it does matter if you lose the sale because of it. As always, Ray, the listeners can reach out to you with their own questions at toughthingsfirst.com. They can continue their education there and the conversation with all the podcasts, blogs, and links to information about your books, Tough Things First and the Zen of Zinn series and of course coming soon, Essential Leadership. Thanks, Ray. Ray Zinn: Thanks Rob.…
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