In this Tough Things First podcast with Ray Zinn, Ray looks at what creating a personal culture does for the people around you and what it really means for you.
Ray Zinn: Hello, Rob.
Rob Artigo: You had the idea of talking about culture and suggested that people should define their culture. For starters, you asked the question, who do you most admire?
Ray Zinn: Yep. Well, you have to have a mentor, somebody that you believe and you, as they say, worship. And so that person’s culture is the one you want to emulate. In my case, is Jesus Christ, is my mentor and one that I want to follow. So I look and see what culture did he have, and then I try to emulate that culture in my life. So that’s what I meant by defining our culture. Who do we most admire? And that will actually define our culture.
Rob Artigo: And then by culture, what are you talking about? I know that you had culture at Micrel semiconductor for those many years, and that was established what it was expected amongst the characteristics of the folks at the business. So is that what you’re talking about here, culture, or are you talking about an overall way of life?
Ray Zinn: It’s the same. Okay. So it’s the same thing. So when I was looking at establishing the culture at Micrel, it’s going to emulate the culture of Jesus Christ. So that’s the kind of culture that we set up, honesty, integrity, dignity of every individual. In other words, not using condescending or vulgar language and doing whatever it takes, no go excuses. That was the culture that I believed Jesus Christ had. And I implemented that culture at Micrel. Not that I required everyone who worked for us to accept Jesus Christ as their mentor, but that the culture of Jesus Christ was established as the founding culture of the company.
Rob Artigo: You believe that some of this stuff is established very early on, when you’re a child, maybe you have those lessons you learn when you’re a kid, the failures that you’ve had. And then also the mentors that you thought were the right ones and turned out to be the wrong type of influence. And you realized that their culture was not favorable to what your goals were. Like you said, you can have a mentor who you admire a lot and find out that they are really not interested in the fact that you want to be a Christian. Then there’s a breakdown there.
Ray Zinn: It didn’t require everybody to be a Christian, obviously. I just required them to be a good person.
Rob Artigo: Well, I meant, Ray, that if you had a mentor that rejected your Christian, you found out that you aligned in a lot of character areas, but they were hostile to you being a Christian. That’d mean that you’d have to find a different mentor, don’t you think?
Ray Zinn: Yeah. Well, certainly. I’ll give you an example. Several years ago, we were having a company picnic, and one of these individuals came up to me. He wasn’t an employee of the company, but his wife was an employee. He said, “May I speak to you for a moment?” I said, “Sure.” And we went over to a grove of oak trees out of the sun and he said, “Before my wife joined your company, Micrel, we had filed for a divorce. We were getting a divorce. Now, she’s the one that wanted the divorce and not me, but still we were on the road to do a divorce.
But after she started working for your company, within three or four months of being involved with Micrel, she came to me and said, ‘I’d like to go into counseling, marriage counseling, and let’s postpone our divorce.'” And then he said, within a few months after that, they actually stopped the divorce. He said, “My wife became a totally different person when she began working for your company, and I just want to thank you.” And he gave me a big hug and he was just so grateful. So you can change. If you get into the right culture, if you get into the right circumstances, you can change. If you develop the right culture. And then his wife, obviously, because she was working at the company, I didn’t even know who she was actually, because we have thousands of people working for it, but apparently the exposure at Micrel was such that that became her culture and that saved that couple’s marriage.
Rob Artigo:
So once we define our culture and we’ve had a good mentor and we’ve worked on it throughout our lives, one of those things that we have to do to continue this is reinforce that culture on a daily basis. What are some of the ways we might do that so that we continue to reinforce the culture that we have worked so hard to develop?
Ray Zinn: Well, you have to say, “Here’s the things I will do and here’s the things I won’t do.” I had a commitment when I was just getting married, as you would, that I would not be alone with another woman except my wife or my children or my family. So I have never since then, by the way, since I made that commitment when I got married, that I would never be alone with another woman, I’ve not done that. I mean, here I am, been married 64 years, and I’ve never been alone with another woman except my wife. And that prevented a bad situation. If I didn’t have that culture, possibly I would’ve gone astray and got involved in areas that I shouldn’t. So you make commitments, you say, “Here’s things I will do, here’s things I won’t do.” And you establish those early on and you stand by those commitments. You make these promises to yourself and those promises then you work diligently to protect.
Rob Artigo: I read that as setting boundaries as well.
Ray Zinn: Exactly. Exactly what you do. You set boundaries. You say, “Here’s what I will do. Here’s what I will not do.”
Rob Artigo: Well, the listeners can join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Questions and comments are always welcome there. Follow Ray Zinn on X and Facebook and LinkedIn and pick up the books. Tough things first, the Zen of Zinn series one, two, and three, and now the The Essential Leader: 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader, and it is an Amazon top seller. Thanks, Ray.
Ray Zinn: Thank you, Rob.
