Change is the one constant. Handling it is a skill in itself. Ray Zinn has seen his share and you can benefit from that experience.
Ray Zinn: Hi Rob. Good to be here today.
Rob Artigo: Great to be back, Ray. Job changes, industry shifts, entrepreneurial leaps, what do these all have in common? They’re all big changes, right. They’re big. They’re big life choices, or sometimes not even by choice. So we’re bound to face these if we are in the business environment long enough, but we do know they just happen in life. So what are some ways to build resilience so that we can get through those tough challenges?
Ray Zinn: That’s the willingness to accept change. That’s what it starts. If you’re intimidated, if you’re under stress because of the change, then you don’t have that resilience.
So, to build resilience, it means you have to accept change, because change is with us. Whether it be our family, our health, our personal education, whatever it is that bringing about these change, change is with us. We’re not going to ignore, or we can’t resist change.
It’s part of life and something we have to accept. So your willingness, your ability to accept these career changes, is just going to be more to your favor. You can’t grow without change.
Rob Artigo: Yeah. A company can also hit that… those moments too. When you were CEO, there were times when you had to make some changes, and I think of it as pivoting. We talked about on this program a few times about what that means, a way to retool and get going in a different direction.
But your company may face a change that you have to lead the company through. And really, it’s important to have the ability to have that mindset of accepting the fact that change will happen so that you can anticipate events down the road, right.
Ray Zinn: Yeah. In fact, I did a study when I was getting my master’s about change, and GE was a good example, or was maybe it was Westinghouse, one of them. It was either GE or Westinghouse. What they were doing is they were actually changing the color of the walls on a yearly basis. They would change it to a different color, and they would move people around from position to position so they get used to change.
So if you get… if you’re resistant to change, it’s called being in a rut. And so a rut refers to those wagons that back in the early 1800s, where they were having these wagon trains, and they would form these ruts in the road… in the trail, and then if the other wagons would just keep deepening the ruts. And so pretty soon the ruts would get so deep that the wagons were having a hard time because of the friction on the wheel being down several inches into the ground.
It caused the wagon trains to have a difficult time. They had to add more oxen and animals to [inaudible 00:03:14] wagons because the ruts got so deep. So this referred to as being in a deep rut. You got to have change. You move over, so you’re not in the rut. You got to accept change and actually invite change if you’re going to progress.
Rob Artigo: Yeah. And it’s not always easy to do with… if you are… if you’re ill-prepared. So that’s why you have to be… you have to anticipate change, and you have to be able to accept the fact that it’s going to be part of what you do.
Ray Zinn:
Part of that book, Who Moved the Cheese, was a well-known bestseller and talked about these mice that kept going back to the same spot for their meal. And then when that cheese when that got moved, then those mice perished because they were so used to having the cheese in the same spot, and they weren’t willing to go and search out where the cheese may have been moved, that they perished. So you either change or perish.
Rob Artigo: Well, let’s talk a little bit about transferable skills. So if I’m going to be ready for change, I’ve got to be able to know what my skills translate into, right. When I think of transferable skills, I think of a skill that is useful in one job and useful in another job too.
Ray Zinn: Well, in 2015, when I sold the company, I was kind of forced, as you would into retirement. But rather than just go off into the sunset, I started writing books, started teaching at various universities. I started a program called ZinnStarter at these schools. So I had to accept change. I was no longer the CEO of Micrel, a semiconductor company. I was now a retired person having to adjust to a different way of life.
I didn’t have thousands of people working for me. I just had to find something else to do to continue progressing. I won’t just say occupy my time because that’s more laziness as you would. But I wanted to find something more productive to do, not just go out and sit on the rocking chair on the porch. So I said I started writing books. I started teaching. I just had to change. I had to move with the cheese.
Rob Artigo: Yeah. And nobody says that you have to go off into the sunset, as they say, when you retire. You can pivot, and you can keep on doing other things. But that’s what you do. You’ve made a great living after retirement just by getting out and being proactive and staying involved. And that’s an impressive feat in itself.
Ray Zinn: I was talking to a friend of mine who was a CFO of a company. It’s a chief financial officer. And so when he retired, I saw him down at Costco. He was doing food demonstration at Costco. And I said, “Well, gosh, that’s really strange that you would go from being a CFO of a very important company to now you’re just preparing these food samples for people at Costco.”
And he says, “Hey, anything to keep me busy.” So it was… He says, “A lazy life is a lazy mind.” And he says, “Yeah, I may be… I may not be crunching numbers like I was when I was a CFO,” but he says, “I’m crunching these goodies and I’m handing them out and meeting and greeting people.” So he said, “It’s not the money, it’s how I spend my time.”
Rob Artigo: Join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Your questions and comments are always welcome there. You can follow Ray on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, the Zen of Zinn series 1, 2, and 3. And on sale now, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals that Make Up the Essential Leader. Thanks, Ray.
Ray Zinn: Thanks Rob.
