A lifetime of leadership experience wrapped in an entertaining and informative read. Join Tough Things First for the official launch of The Essential Leader by Ray Zinn, 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals that Make Up The Essential Leader. (Watch the Video Podcast)
Rob Artigo: I’m Rob Artigo, former Bay Area Radio Personality and your host for this edition of The Tough Things First podcast. Here with me once again is Ray Zinn, the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley history. Today we understand the Essential Leader. This is a special podcast in more ways than one, it’s a video podcast. The link is at toughthingsfirst.com. Today is the day we announce Ray Zinn’s newest book, fresh Off the presses, The Essential Leader, 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals that Make Up The Essential Leader. Congratulations, Ray. This book really turned out great.
Ray Zinn: I think it’s one of the most important books that I’ve ever written.
Rob Artigo: In this podcast I’ll read a couple of excerpts from it. We’ll talk about Greg who did the forward and just sort of discuss the book. But today we understand that this book is available at all retailers. It is available in digital and print form, and we’re happy to have you read it and we hope you will. So what inspired you to write about leadership in this way? I mean, The Essential Leader, that’s promising a lot and it delivers.
Ray Zinn: Well, the whole subject of leadership has been written about forever. I mean, going all the way back to the time of Christ. I mean, who is my mind the greatest of all leaders. Unfortunately, leaders are looked upon as being not so good. Other words, they’re looked upon in a negative way. Whether you’re a corporate leader, or a political leader, or international leader, whatever your role is as a leader it’s not necessarily viewed in a positive light. So I decided to write about the essential leader, being not just leading, but what are the essential aspects and attributes of a good leader? So I worked on that. I have spent months looking at and thinking and reading about what is essential to be a good leader. So that’s what prompted me to write the book.
Rob Artigo: Also it was a while back, it was a few years ago, but what we did a podcast series a little bit shorter than what’s in this book on being the essential leader. A lot of those ideas came from that. I mean, we culled it from various aspects of things that we’d covered in podcasts and said, why don’t we take one of these and make a chapter out of it? You came up with some really good ideas. I’m just going to flip through to, let’s see, where the chapters are and I’ll just give you a couple of them.
So you talk about sound judgment, which I’ll have a quote from here shortly. But you talk about the concept of try, try again and you have a twist on that. How you carry yourself, what you wear is really important and valuable as far as people deciding whether or not they want to follow you. You had some really cool ideas. One of them was on re-thinking micromanagement because that has been something that, like people in leadership not being viewed in high esteem, you have people who have varying attitudes or opinions about micromanagement and you say, hey, look, it’s really about managing by walking around. That’s micromanaging in a way where you’re there but you’re not really micromanaging.
Ray Zinn: Well, this whole concept of micromanagement has a negative connotation, it doesn’t need to be. Micromanagement, if you don’t look at the small things, at the details, the large things are going to become a problem. So micro means small. Okay? That’s what micro means, or tiny. So you want to look out for the tiny things because the tiny things are the ones that kill you. Those are the ones we tend to overlook. The things that we tend to not really reflect on or try to do anything about because we’ll say, “Oh, it’s such a small thing, it’ll take care of itself,” but they don’t.
Small things become big things. It’s like a leak in your radiator, it’ll become a big thing ultimately. Micro, being small, and managing being managing the small things as well as the large things, it’s often viewed that leaders are looking at the big picture. Well, you got to look at the small picture too, not just the big picture. That keeps you focused on the objectives of the company, what you’re trying to accomplish to become a successful company. I turned the negative aspects of micromanaging into a positive and that was the purpose of that chapter.
Rob Artigo: Yeah, I mean you’re really saying when you walk around and find out what are the small things that are happening to the people who are on your staff, you understand what they’re going through and their experiences and you can help them address those things so that they’re more productive and more creative or they’re better sales people or whatever the case may be. You also have here, fortunately, and I want to remind people, this is the book launch video for The Essential Leader and it’s Ray Zinn’s new book out today, everywhere in print and digital if you’d like to grab it. Greg McCown-
Ray Zinn: McEwen.
Rob Artigo: McEwen, I mispronounce his name all the time. Terrific endorsement from him, “Participating in this is really cool.” He’s written some books himself and widely regarded as a pretty smart guy. That must have been pretty interesting to get him on.
Ray Zinn: Oh yeah. I mean, Greg’s a friend of mine, but he’s also a Stanford grad and very knowledgeable in business. Also he’s done podcasts and written extensively. He actually has a book called Essentialism, which is kind of interesting because essentially the same thing as what I’m talking about, the essential, what are the essential aspects of leadership. He talks about what’s the essential aspects of living your life, focusing on the key aspects of existence as opposed just to just let come what may as you would, or reacting to everything rather than only reacting to the things which are essential. That’s kind of where he was headed, and when I wrote about the Essential Leader and doing the same thing, what are the essential aspects of being a good leader? When I became listed as Silicon Valley’s longest serving CEO, I reflected on that. I didn’t know I was going to get that honor.
Then when it was put out and published, I reflected on it. I says, that’s interesting. Why am I the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley? Because Silicon Valley is one of the most well-known places on earth. I mean, I don’t know of anyone in a civilized nation that doesn’t know where Silicon Valley is or what Silicon Valley is. So here I am living and being a CEO in probably the hotbed of technology and probably one of the best known places on earth, and here I am the longest serving CEO. It really boils down to my style of leadership. That’s what we cover in the book is, how do you become a long serving CEO? Most CEOs don’t serve for more than five years, that’s the average. So I’ve served nearly 40, and so that’s like eight times what the average CEO serves. So I said, okay, how do I do that? What allows me then to become the longest serving CEO? That’s what’s covered in the book is my experience and what it takes to be able to have longevity, to be able to have that tenure as a CEO.
Rob Artigo: Yeah, you have a way in this book about conveying some stories where you talk about historical figures and how they play into the idea of how people view leadership and there’s good leadership and bad leadership, and you also attribute your success not to just your own ability to get things done, but that you place so much emphasis on the people who work for you, the teams that are there. You have one whole chapter called Inspiring Passion, and it says, “If you do not have passion, you have a hole in your leadership, and that’s specific to the essential leadership of the essential leader. If the essential leader doesn’t have passion, certainly not essential.” You said, “I used to say, if that was the case, you might as well just roll over and bury yourself. That means you can just hang things up right there in business or anywhere else for that matter. If you don’t have passion and you can’t inspire that in your teams, then you might as well forget it.”
Ray Zinn: Absolutely. It’s our passion that bleeds over to others that inspires them to want to be the best of the best, of the best. They talk about good, better, best. I mean, to do that you need to be passionate about what you’re doing because that becomes the hallmark of a successful company is the passion of that company. If I look at Intel Semiconductor, who was formed in 1967, I think it was, and I started my company in 1978, Intel was considered the greatest on earth. I mean Bob Noyce, Gordon Moore, and those folks that started Intel were my idols at Fairchild, when I worked at Fairchild. So they put together a very wonderful team of people and a passion like you wouldn’t believe, it was a real passion with the people that worked at Intel. But over the years, Intel has kind of lost their way. I think they’ve lost their passion, honestly, Rob.
I mean that passion has disappeared. I saw it happening in the early ’80s is where I saw Intel’s passion kind of drift, and they became less and less of a factor in the semiconductor industry. I’m hoping they’ll find their passion back because that says who they are. We often talk about Steve Jobs and Apple, and I remember how that company started out and it was a nobody. I mean, they had difficulty even getting underway. Then once they got themselves going and Steve Jobs was able to inculcate that passion in Apple, it began to flourish.
Then in about 1995, Steve left Apple and Apple began to lose their passion because the passion was Steve Jobs, and then he went off and did something else, and then Apple’s passion drifted and it lost its purpose. It wasn’t until Steve came back several years later that that passion came back to Apple. Now look Apple’s one of the most highest rated companies in the world. So passion has to be from the leader. So that’s why we talk about in that chapter of Essential Leader, of how important passion is, because without passion, you’re nothing.
Rob Artigo: Yeah. You talk at length about when we knew that Steve Jobs was going to pass away he created a secession plan so that he could pass things off. He found the right guy and the right guy …. Every step of the way the right guy follows him because he’s inspired passion in them and he knows that they have the ability to inspire passion in others. This book, which again is The Essential Leader by Ray Zinn, terrific book about these aspects of leadership, also areas of knowledge that you need to get your hands on in order to be the essential leader.
I mean, everybody wants a good leader. People hope to get a great leader, but the essential leader is he/she is in the realm of a needle in a haystack. I mean, you also talk about women in leadership in this book, and you say sometimes they’re even better and more qualified than their male counterparts to do things. That’s really cool too. We expect women will want … Young women too. I mean people in college age who are in business want to get MBAs or whatever the case may be, or just be entrepreneurs and start businesses. This is a terrific book. There’s no other place where you’re going to get this. Also, it’s not like it’s a big 300, 400, 500 page book. It cuts to the chase. It has really succinct messaging in it and it’s very clear. Ray, is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up our special podcast here on the book launch?
Ray Zinn: Well, I think if you want to become an essential leader, and I mean that sincerely from the bottom of my heart, you need to get this book. It will help you understand what it takes to be the longest serving CEO.
Rob Artigo: Great way of ending it right there, Ray. So that’s The Essential Leader by Ray Zinn available on all major book platforms. It’s in paperback, but also digital if you want to get it. Check it out on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other platforms, we hope you will. Ray, you’re fond of telling people to make sure, at each one of these platform, wherever they buy the book, they should rate the book so that we understand how their reaction to it and we can gauge what to do in the future.
Ray Zinn: Exactly. Thank you very much, Rob.
