Digital vision, human values: Rob Zelinka on leading with heart and tech

Well, thank you so much. It's really an honor to meet with you today. You and I have had so many enriching conversations about our careers, about our families, and frankly just simply about our journeys in life.

Thank you so much. If you would have asked me over 30 years ago if I saw myself working with technology, I would have told you no, probably not. But what I learned very early on was that technology was there to enable a human-to-human interaction. So I found myself at the intersection of human-to-human interaction and technology. Little did I know that every day of my life from that time forward I would be at that intersection. My role over time has been to understand how technology can enable a human to do better, to work faster, to work more efficiently, to work more error-free. At the same time, I have to really understand what technologies will resonate versus fads. Early in my life, I was given the nickname by my friends and family as 'Gadget Man' because every time a new technology was released, I was running out to Circuit City, Computer City—I'm dating myself because none of those companies are around anymore—Radio Shack, and I was buying with my hard-earned money those devices. What I wanted to learn and understand was how this can improve a way of life for people. Oftentimes I wasn't able to find a way; it was exciting, but at the end of the day I ended up setting it aside and going back to doing things the way I always did. But every now and again there was some technology that completely revolutionized my thought process. The very first device that did that for me was the Palm Pilot. Ironically, you might remember—and again I'm dating myself, I'm an older guy—this company called US Robotics, who also is no longer around, made modems, but they also made this device called a Palm Pilot. That device allowed a person to take all of their contacts and put them in this device. The flip side was we all had these little note cards that we hand-wrote someone's name, address, phone number on, and we put them in a slot on our desk. So when I needed to look up you, for example, I would go to 'A' in the dictionary, then I'd realize I put you under 'M' for your first name, not your last name, and then I'd flip over to 'M' and find you. Then I would pick up my cell phone or desk phone and call you. I was just mesmerized with how I could have data at my fingertips and have it easier to read and understand. That was the real first inflection point. Now, as you might imagine, I was working for a company that had a sales team used to managing contacts the old-fashioned way. Some had a paper binder and would find the name on a list. But I had to really work hard to show people how this new technology could help them be more efficient in their work. I've been able to use that playbook over and over again over the last 30 years. Today it just happens to be with how does AI help enable a human-to-human interaction.

Yes, I did very early on. I think back to the late 80s, early 90s, where technology was just starting to find its way into our worlds, into our lives. An average Friday night for me 35 years ago was I would go to Blockbuster Video and rent a movie, and I would hope the movie I wanted was on the shelf, but oftentimes it wasn't. I'd walk out disappointed. Those movies were on videotape cassettes, and there used to be these words on every box: 'Please be kind, rewind.' What would end up happening is if you watched a lot of movies, you would burn out your VCR and have to buy a new one, which was very expensive. So a company thought about making a device whose sole purpose was just to rewind tapes so you didn't have to burn out your VCR. At that moment, I thought, 'This is great, I'm able to watch a movie in my home, I don't have to go to a theater, I can make my own popcorn and drink my own beverages.' Then all of a sudden DVDs thrust themselves onto the scene. There was a format war: VHS versus Beta, then Divix versus traditional DVD. You had to place a bet on which technology was going to win. It wasn't always the best technology that won; it was the technology most likely to be adopted by the mainstream. Divix did not win because it had a complex user system; you had to go through an enormously challenging process to unlock the movie, whereas you just bought a DVD and it worked. The value behind that was you could go to any point in the movie instantly, whereas with tape you had to fast forward. So now we're at this inflection point where the way we consume movies is different, faster, more efficient, easier to store. Fast forward to Apple: Steve Jobs changed so many of our lives by taking the risk. I remember vividly when Apple started putting every song on a device that could fit in the palm of your hand. Many people said, 'That won't work, the quality isn't as good, not all studios will embrace this.' But eventually the mass market spoke and saw this was the preferred way to consume music and video. So I always tried to be right on the edge of what I refer to as 'state of the market,' not 'state of the art.' Not always the best technology wins; the technology that wins is the one most likely to be adopted by people because they see it's easy to use, consistent, reliable. I've maintained that approach in my daily repertoire: I want to make sure you can use it and my people can support it, because at the end of the day, it's going to break, and you're going to want help when it breaks, and you're going to want it fixed as quickly as possible. If you're watching that movie and it stops working, you have maybe a minute or two to get it back up before you give up and go do something else. You've now lost interest.

I don't think we're ever fully ready for what's coming. It's not just new to us; I could make this case for all of the 30 years I've been working. Were we ready to replace horse and buggies with motorized vehicles? Were we ready to move to automatic transmissions from manual? Were we ready to embrace the first iPhone? I reference Steve Jobs a lot because he has totally transformed our lives in so many meaningful and impactful ways. The best form of flattery is when someone tries to replicate what you're doing. That's where impostor syndrome comes in sometimes. You might remember when Apple did what they did, and suddenly other companies manufactured similar technologies that looked the same, felt the same, acted the same. Steve Jobs got really angry on stage and said, 'Hey, they ripped us off.' He's not wrong. But here's the reality: human-to-human interaction, while unique, has similarities from interaction to interaction. Being at that intersection and being able to read the human and understand the behavior—oftentimes people don't know what they need; they need to be helped and shown the way. Think of how you bank today. When was the last time you walked into a bank or credit union building and spoke to a human? It's been a while. What we are talking about at Jack Henry is the systems that support the financial services industry as a whole. The marketplace was never built for the internet; the internet just kind of happened in the background. Now that the internet is ubiquitous, do you remember what it was like at your house the last time the internet went down? It's chaos. Your family starts getting anxious. But think of your life: you have devices that when you speak to them, they speak back, answer questions, provide information, automate things. I can turn a light on or off in my house, start a vehicle to warm up or cool down. This has become so common that we expect it to always be there. So are we ready for what's next? We're never fully ready. But we have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, because the world is in a perpetual state of change. Those that are as close to being in front of the curve as possible have an advantage. I'll leave you with this thought: every single company in this world is a technology company. However, there are several different types. There are those that know they're a technology company and are immersed in technology driving an outcome or an experience. On the complete other end of the spectrum, there are those that haven't realized they're a technology company. They may still think, 'We sell tools at a hardware store, we're not a technology company.' That drill gets plugged into the wall or you put a battery in it and it works. I promise you, those companies are technology companies, and the sooner they realize it, the better equipped they will be to deal with the change on their doorstep.

The first thing you have to realize is it's happening whether you want it to or not. There is no amount of planning that you can do to prevent it from happening. You have to ready yourself, your team, your company, your clients, your stakeholders for what's on the doorstep. The next thing I think is really critically important is be comfortable with yourself and where you are in your journey. It's okay to be vulnerable and say, 'Hey, we're in an area where it's foreign to us. We need help. We need to bring someone in that can help us assess our current state, assess how this technology shift is going to affect our company, our clients, our value proposition, our communities that we serve.' Then try not to boil the ocean and solution for every conceivable thing. Identify, using what I refer to as the MoSCoW method, the must-haves—the things you've absolutely got to nail—and get them right out of the gate. Focus on those. Eat the elephant one bite at a time. Get some quick wins. I grew up in Chicago; the baseball team wins once every 106 years. When you win, you cherish the moment. Get some wins, focus on the things you know you can win quickly, build your confidence, run your playbook, refine your playbook. Never stop learning. The moment you get comfortable is the moment you fall prey to a lot of different risks: the risk of being complacent, the risk of having someone you didn't even see coming blow right by you and get the upper hand. You just have to continue to be in a perpetual state of learning. Learning is foundational for growth. Growth is also driven by failure, so don't be afraid to fail. Every single person, because they're human, is going to fail at one point or another. Michael Jordan, arguably one of the best basketball players to have ever played the game, has missed more shots than he's successfully made. But he isn't going to make those shots unless he attempts them. So you have to get comfortable with failure. Failure is a natural part of growth and learning. The other aspect is surround yourself with incredibly passionate people, people that have an ability to learn and are invested in your business. If they're not invested, if they're not passionate about your business, find other people.

That's a fantastic question. We have different grades of clients based on the size and scale of their organization. For example, we have very small community banks and credit unions that rely heavily on Jack Henry to be their technology provider. Basically all aspects of the technology used to drive a member experience at a credit union or an account holder experience at a bank is done by Jack Henry. We take that very seriously. We run technology for plus or minus over 7,700 banks and credit unions across the nation. That's a massive responsibility that our team takes very seriously. On the flip side, on the complete other end of the spectrum, you have very large financial institutions that have fully developed IT organizations, fully developed data organizations, and they're trying to drive outcomes. They leverage us for the technology aspect in some regards, but they manage and operate that technology in many instances. What they're looking to do with us is a variety of things. They might be looking to us for knowledge and experience. Just yesterday, as an example, one of our core partners who we use extensively in the IT service management space—we have built all of our IT service management and IT asset management efforts in this platform as a single source of truth, a single record for our business. Our clients at the larger level are looking themselves to implement a similar approach, and they want to learn from us. That leads to maybe federating with us: can we attach our instance to your instance and share data back and forth in a bidirectional manner? It's really an exciting part of what I enjoy the most: going out and meeting with our clients, understanding the dynamics of a given community or aspect of the marketplace. It just so happened yesterday I was talking to a bank located out west. They are a really smart group of people wanting to leverage technology to the fullest to drive an improved account holder experience at their bank. They see that technology is an enabler to do just that. That's where you have really smart people around the table working together towards common outcomes.

Another tremendous question. Let me start with this premise: Jack Henry was built by two people that had a dream. They presented that dream to their families, and their families told them, 'Run as fast as you can to achieve your dream, and if it doesn't work out, we'll figure it out.' When you look at our campus in southwest Missouri, it's a beautiful, sprawling set of acreage with low-rise buildings that resemble homes. That was by purpose and design, because if it didn't work out, perhaps those office buildings could be used as homes down the road. Well, this company has worked out tremendously. What the company was built over 45 years ago is largely in play today. It was built by people for people, and it's really a tremendous culture. When we look at technology, we see it as a differentiator, but we don't see it as a replacement for people. We believe our differentiator is people and how people support people. We are deeply immersed in our communities; that is the premise of how we operate our company. We believe we're in business to make our clients successful. How many companies believe they're in business to make themselves successful? We believe that if we have happy associates, they're going to make our clients happy. If we have happy clients, they're going to reward us on Wall Street and in the marketplace. That circular approach has worked for us. So when you think about technology, we don't look at technology to replace people; we look at technology as a teammate. Technology that can help refine the user experience, get the right amount of data to the human that's supporting another human more accurately, more quickly, so that it's meaningful and impactful. If I go back to that movie example, if something happens in the transaction where you're watching a movie and it stops, you have a very small window of patience. If it doesn't start again, you go somewhere else. The same thing happens in the business realm. What I see today is technology moving faster than it's ever moved before. But I also see it this way: today is the slowest that technology will move; it's only going to get faster. So back to your original question: we've got to get comfortable with that, embrace it, and realize that we're going to make some decisions that aren't the right decisions. They seemed to be the right decision at the time, but we're going to brush ourselves off and go right back at it and fix it. The relationship we have with our clients—we have this concept called 'One Jack Henry.' I know a lot of companies have a 'One [company name]' mentality, but here's what 'One Jack Henry' means to Jack Henry, to our client, and to the community. We start with one concept: transparency. Transparency means we tell you what we can do and what we can't do. It takes a real vulnerable soul to acknowledge that something is not something we do or something we're good at, because that shows vulnerability. We don't want people to be disappointed, but rather than say, 'Yeah, we can do that,' and then find out we can't, we'd rather be transparent and let you know what we can do today and what we can't do today. The next are what we call the three C's. The next pillar or tenant we operate with today is around consistency. For better or worse, the most important element you can bring to a client experience is consistency. Consistency means many things: it means it works almost all the time, the way you support people when things are bad. Not everything is unicorns and rainbows; things break. When they break, you want to know that someone is on the other end of the phone—an empathetic person, not necessarily a technology bot. You just want someone to understand why you're frustrated and listen to you. You want to be heard. What we want to be able to leverage technology for is to put that empathetic person there, but give them the information they need to solve the problem immediately or to diffuse the energy and anxiety. Let me give you an example. One of the areas of business we have is we run call centers, and some of those call centers are focused on fraud. Imagine this: it's happened to almost everyone, and if it hasn't, it's likely going to happen. You get a text, email, or phone call from your credit card issuer noting suspicious activity on your account. Immediately your heart rate goes up. You stop what you're doing, log into your account, and see charges that don't look familiar. Now you're on the phone calling the number on the back of your credit card, talking to another human. At this point, you're likely anxious, trying to understand the implications. The person on the other end is there to help, to diffuse and calm, and they have to weather a lot: your anxiety, have empathy, understanding, situational awareness. Technology will help enable that human to be better, faster, and more consistent at their job. So I mentioned the first C: consistency. The next is collaboration. I believe we're better as a group than as individuals or parts. Our best work is done in a collaborative way. We bring a whole bunch of passionate, knowledgeable people together to solve a business challenge. We are likely going to come out with many ideas, many ways. We're going to debate them, litigate them, and then agree, align, and execute. The next of the three C's, after consistency and collaboration, is communication. For better or worse, I tell all my children: people judge us by the way we communicate—the words we use, how we write. I would submit that's a lost art in today's world where everything is an acronym or emoji. You have to learn a different language to communicate with people. But at the end of the day, if you speak the language of the person on the other side of the equation and it resonates, all of those things build one thing, and it's the most important thing for any relationship to be successful: trust. You cannot have a meaningful relationship without trust. Think of it this way: your teenage son has his driver's license and wants to take your prized weekend sports car out for a drive. He knows he's not permitted unless you're in the car. You go out of town for the weekend, and your cell phone tells you the car is being driven. Now you have a trust issue with your son. Think of how hard it's going to be to trust him again. The same thing happens in the business world. It doesn't take much to lose trust, but it takes an awful lot to earn trust. We're very protective of that trust. We believe the relationships we build with our clients are long-lasting, not just a moment in time. We build that relationship over time, and it gets handed from leadership team to leadership team as people retire or go on to other opportunities. We're very sensitive to the trust we've earned with our clients.

I was sharing with someone recently that this is certainly different than other inflection points, but there are some similarities. Think about 30 years ago when the computer was being thrust into the marketplace. IBM created the PC XT, and we were going to replace the typewriter. The dot matrix printer came into the fold, a fax machine ended up coming into the fold, and it was all designed to improve the user experience. Then we moved from the PC era to the mobile PC era, when laptops started to come into the fold. Around that same time, Blackberry entered the marketplace. I remember this day like it was yesterday: I can leave my desk at work and get my email on this small device in the palm of my hand. How neat is this? I can send an email at the grocery store, at home, the barber shop, a restaurant. Now it became a double-edged sword because we never left work at home. You had to teach yourself that there has to be this work-life balance, because the job will take as much as you're willing to give it. You have to have these lines of demarcation that you will not cross. This inflection point we're dealing with today is similar. I think what we're wrestling with right now is how does this technology fundamentally change human-to-human experiences. For example, there are already autonomous vehicles being tested. They've been tested for years. If you go to Phoenix, Arizona, you will see no shortage of these cars without a driver. The car works about 98% of the time. There's 2% of the time that something happens. I saw one of those 2% times as I was walking to a baseball game at Chase Field. There was a funeral procession. The cars were coming off the expressway, and there was a police officer oddly positioned in the middle of an intersection. He was positioned there because the car with sensors and cameras wasn't picking him up. The car kept lurching forward, and he kept moving around so the camera would see him. It was critically important that he was positioned exactly where he needed to be to stop those cars because there was a funeral procession coming. Would you get on an airplane that landed successfully 98% of the time? No way. Would you eat out of a bowl of jelly beans if you knew that 2% were poisonous and would kill you immediately? No way. So we still have with this technology some failures, and some of these failures are epic and reported on. This is why I feel that yes, some roles will change and evolve, and while some roles may be reduced, other roles will be created. Our approach towards managing through this inflection point is to ensure that we have a human in the loop. Just today I read an article that one of our team members posted. A very large CRM company that everybody knows and uses announced that they've been able to save over $50 million by using AI, and the pretense is they basically saved it through role elimination. I thought to myself, 'Is that really the case, or is this company that happens to sell technology trying to sell this technology under the pretense that you're probably under financial pressure to reduce or optimize cost models, and we just happen to be in that space where we can help you automate process, reduce your dependency on humans?' I think that's the fundamental challenge every company has to face right now: they have to come up with some governance for how they're going to manage the use of this technology, in the same way they had to figure out how to manage the use of mobile devices. You might remember when those Blackberries came up, there were people that were really anxious that we were going to lose control of our data. Before, you didn't get access to our network unless you were in the office, and it was not likely that people were going to be in the office 24 hours a day, so that's how you protected your data. Now when you put the data in the palm of someone's hand, accessible any place, anytime, anywhere, by anybody, you have a whole different set of circumstances to govern and plan for. I do think that this technology we must embrace it, we have to have good solid governance, we have to be willing to alter our governance as the technology evolves and matures. Some elements of the technology won't play out the way we want or hope; others will. You're going to see consolidation in the marketplace, I'm pretty certain of it. I think you're going to see the smaller niche players that have really good technology get acquired by the bigger companies because they're going to be in a mentality of it's cheaper and faster to buy it than build it. I do think this is all going to play out here in the next few years. Our role as leaders is to try to prepare ourselves, our stakeholders, our clients, our customers, our communities for how that technology is going to evolve and change, and embrace it to the extent where it can be used for good rather than weaponized for bad. That's the element you're hearing a lot about right now: the threats that face a company are enormous, constant, and in many regards well-funded by foreign entities that would love nothing more than to disrupt the way of life we have in our country. We have to be one step ahead of them. A bad guy can have many bad days; the good guys, all it takes is one bad day for you to have a really bad moment in your company. You have to be on your A-game every step of the way. You just have to come to the conclusion that technology is your ticket to helping you; you just got to make the right technology decisions and make sure you have the governance to back it.

That's a heavy question. My wife and I live by some real simple principles: we just want to be good humans, and we teach our children to be good humans. Let me be clear: there are days where I'm not a good human, and I want to own that as quickly as possible. I'll share a story with you really quickly. Summer has broken, children are out of school, and my son had a pool party at the house. It was raining, so they were all locked up inside. They went up into my room—I have a room in my house that I use to relax, I go up with my tablet, read emails, get caught up on things, maybe watch a baseball game at night. That's my domain, and my son knows he's not allowed in there unless I'm there. Well, he allowed one of his friends to go in the room, and they started getting wild and knocked some things off the wall. I heard the crash because it was literally above me. I ran upstairs and had a really adverse reaction. I recognized they're kids; I could have handled that differently. The very first thing I did was apologize to the parents for my outburst. The parents said, 'Hey Rob, we get it. I'm so sorry, I was embarrassed that was my child.' We were all kids at one point. Being a good human means you own your misgivings and missteps. The other thing: I want to make a difference in as many people's lives as I can. Every day presents its share of opportunities to make a positive difference or a less than positive difference; the choice is yours. Sometimes you don't see the choice, but it's there. Think of it this way: you're in your own zone, walking down the street, going into the grocery store because your significant other has tasked you with picking up some steaks for dinner, maybe a loaf of bread. You've got your cell phone in your hand, responding to a text or email, and you're just walking into the store. The person in front of you slips and falls. You have two choices: choice one, keep walking like it never happened; choice two, stop, put your phone in your pocket, help that person, ask them if they're okay. I wish I could tell you that every single time that has happened I stopped. I didn't. But I'm mindful of it now the older I get, because I could be that person that slipped and fell, and I would want someone to be there to help me out. The other element for me about being a good human is recognizing that the older I get, the more I'm aware of my limitations. It's why I'm working so hard to educate myself. I feel blessed that I work for a company that allows me unlimited training opportunities through LinkedIn Learning. In my spare time, I can go and learn about PHOps or generative AI or any type of technology, so I can have a meaningful conversation with someone that does that for a living. I can learn from them, and they can learn from me. At the end of the day, what I wish for is that when people reflect on me, they say, 'You know what, that person made me a better person. That person contributed to my life in a meaningful and positive way, and I was better to have them in my life.' I know that sounds really pious in nature, but I just think about it at a human level, not necessarily at a business or technology level.

Absolutely. For better or worse, the place that I'm most active from a social perspective is LinkedIn. I don't do much on X these days. Here's why: I find X to be sometimes a negative influence for me because politics enter into the fold, some real interesting topics end up there. LinkedIn for the most part is pretty much focused on life and business and helping people. I was amazed the other day to see that I have over 25,000 connections. It took me about 25 years to build those connections. My very first LinkedIn connection came in 2005, I believe. Here we are 20 plus years later, and I have over 25,000 people. The remarkable thing is I try to help people. Every now and again someone will reach out to me on LinkedIn and say, 'Hey Rob, do you know anybody that works at this company? I'm looking for work and I'm just looking to differentiate myself.' Very rarely can I say, 'Sorry, I don't know anybody there.' Almost always I either know someone that's working there or know someone that knows someone. That's what I would tell you: never underestimate the power of your network. The network is a real powerful influencer that can help solve problems in a crowdsource mentality. So yes, you can reach me on LinkedIn. I will respond to every person that reaches out to me. Sadly, though, there's no shortage of bad actors out there using LinkedIn to try to take advantage of people that want to be good humans, so you've got to have your guard up. But that's just the world we live in.

You're welcome. Thank you. Have a great night.