Trust and Value in People. As AI and automation reshape roles, is investing in people—through servant leadership and culture—still the key to the ultimate competitive edge? In this two part Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn offers guidance on balancing tech efficiencies with recognition and development to keep teams motivated and loyal.
Rob Artigo: I just saw a story recently where a company was using AI, and I want to say that it’s related to Facebook, but they were using AI as a help mechanism online. So, if you went to the help desk, you would start by talking to the virtual assistant and the virtual assistant helped people navigate accessing their accounts. And the virtual assistant helped people hack accounts, because it wasn’t able to understand that the person is manipulating the AI. So, certainly right now, we still need human beings dealing with these things and having oversight over what AI or tech is doing.
You built Micrel Semiconductor into a consistently profitable company over 37 years by putting people first. Obviously, your technology that you’re producing at Micrel, was advancing, improving the world, creating opportunities, creating jobs, doing all these things because it was a technologically advanced product. It continued to advance what we were doing in business and in society. How do leaders stay human centered when technology is moving fast, even when you’re the one producing the technology that’s moving fast?
Ray Zinn: We look at this AI era as being the only time that we’ve had advancement and that’s just not true.
Rob Artigo: Yeah, true.
Ray Zinn: I remember, in Adam Smith’s book, Wealth of Nations, he talked about the division of labor and that’s exactly what we’re talking about today in this podcast. Pick up that book. Pick up Adam Smith, that was written back in the 1700s and it talks about division of labor, specialization as you would. The big concern back in Adam Smith’s time, which is back in the 1700s, had to do with the railroad. The railroad was expanding rapidly. I mean, I think many of our listeners will know or remember the day of Stagecoach and Pony Express and so forth. I mean, look at how we delivered mail and packages back in the early 1800s or even the 1700s. We did it by what we call Pony Express. The Pony Express rider would have these big satchels on the back of a saddle and he would carry as many packages as it would fit in those satchels in the back.
And then he would race like crazy. He would gallop for a few hours and then he’d go to a relay station and he’d hop off and jump on another horse and take off and do it again, or they’d change riders and, this relay, and that’s the way that we got mail from one point A to point B, was through these Pony Express riders. It’s almost like having a faster internet. With the railroad coming on board and laying track across the United States and moving mail and other packages with the train, putting Pony Express riders out of work.
Rob Artigo: And the telegraph.
Ray Zinn: And the telegraph put them out of work. Yeah, exactly. That’s another one. The telegraph also made it quicker because that was the internet back in the day of the Pony Express rider, taking him out of work. And so, they were the, Pony Express rider here the Amazons of those days, they moved lots of product. Brink’s was another one, a company that started up by moving products like Amazon does or like UPS or FedEx or whatever. It was not too long ago that the United States Postal Service only delivered mail. They didn’t deliver packages, but now they’re delivering packages like there’s no tomorrow. And that’s changed the way that the mail services are having to operate. So, we are always under change. If you were making stage coaches or buggy whips or you were raising horses for the Pony Express or for the stagecoaches, your business went down as they improved the mass carrying of packages and mail.
And same thing with the farmers. I mean, we used to plant all the crops by hand by putting seeds in the ground by physically pushing them into the ground. If you have a little garden in your backyard, that’s how you hand plant them. But these big farms now, it’s all automated, all automated. So, there’s a lot of farm workers were put out of business when we automated farming. Same thing with milking a cow. Nobody really commercially milks cows by hand. It’s all super automated. I mean, if you looked at the way we produce our produce now, it’s all completely automated. Whether you’re picking fruit or whether you’re picking strawberries, it’s all done by machines. So, if you were a handpicker, you were out of business, with one of those big machines came in and did it for you for the landowner.
So, we’re always going to be undergoing change. The personal computer changed our lives dramatically, where we used to be relying on these big mainframe computers. Now, we just do this all by hand. Back when I was a kid, Dick Tracy had this little smartwatch on his hand that had this little antenna that went up his arm and he had this smart communication device and we kind of laughed at it because we didn’t have anything like that. As a kid, we didn’t have that smartwatch or smart radio like Dick Tracy had. But now we have as much computing power on our wrists as we have on a mainframe back when I was a kid.
Rob Artigo: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then Maxwell Smart had a phone in his shoe.
Ray Zinn: That’s right. And now we don’t put our phone in our shoe, we put it in our pocket.
Rob Artigo: Or it’s like you said, it has an interface that where some watch, and mine doesn’t, I have a Garmin and so I can’t talk through my watch. But some of them, you can answer your phone through your watch and talk to people through your watch, so you don’t even need… Your phone can be on a nightstand 30 feet away or an end table or something, and you could be talking on your phone through your watch. So, there’s no question about it. There have been advances in technology. So, I wonder, when we do this, when we advance, many leaders feel like, Oh, I don’t want to fall behind, so I got to automate aggressively. So, how do you balance this efficiency with the human side of it, humanity?
Ray Zinn: Well, I got two grandchildren that are looking for work right now. They graduated from college and they’re really worried because AI has taken away some of the jobs that they were looking… These kids started like four or five years ago as a freshman and a little before AI, as you would. So, they just took regular courses for a regular job and by the time they graduated, they found out that, oh, the degree that I just got is now being substituted by AI.
Rob Artigo: Listeners, pick up Ray’s books, The Essential Leader and Tough Things First, as well as the Zen of Zinn series. For more practical guidance on these fundamentals, visit toughthingsfirst.com, for episodes, blogs, and links to Ray’s social media. So, what are your thoughts on leading people in an AI driven world? Share your comments. Remember, do the tough things first.
