CIO Rob Zelinka on AI, Resilient Leadership & Building a Legacy That Outlasts You

Thank you, Steve. So happy to join you tonight.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I was at a young age, newly married, trying to sort out what I was going to be when I grew up.

Yeah, I sure did have a full head of hair. Thanks, by the way. Thank you for noticing.

It's okay. Um, and ultimately I was doing noble work. I was working in a restaurant, tending bar, serving food. And it was at that point that I realized while I was making really good money, it wasn't a sustainable way of making a living. And I was enamored with technology at the time. This was at the juncture where everything was starting to evolve from a technology perspective. The internet had made its way onto our scene. Computers were making their way onto the scene. And so these restaurants and bars that had these old-fashioned cash registers with the button and the big cash drawer that would come out and hit you in the stomach, that was being replaced by a computer. And no one knew how to set these computers up, connect them, much less use them. And I was just at the intersection of human behavior and technology. And that was the first time I was at that intersection. And I said to myself, I believe I can make a living doing this. I have a passion for teaching people, helping to enable people. I have a passion for technology and that technology is the strongest enabler. And so my journey started there and it kept going and going. There were various inflection points throughout my career. The first being the events of 9/11. What a horrible day in our lives. But boy, it did teach us quite a bit. I was there. I navigated that. And then the next inflection point after that was the financial crisis. And I learned the art and skill of cost containment, cost avoidance, cost optimization. And there's been various inflection points since then. Most recently of course leading and navigating companies through the use of responsible use I should say of AI. It's amazing how major events and dealing with those challenges shape us as leaders on how we deal with those things, how we make it through it, and our ability to solve the challenge, the unexpected challenges that those bring, and get our organizations through the other side.

Yeah. Steve, you know, it was really an impactful moment in my career. I love to learn from others. I learned at a very early stage in my career that I need to find a room where I'm the dumbest guy in the room and surround myself with knowledge, skill, and experience and just sit there and learn from people. To that end, I went and listened to a gentleman who was the CIO of Toyota Motor Sales at the time. And he was discussing, first off, he pulled the audience of technology leaders and asked a simple question, what kind of company do you think Toyota Motor Sales is? And of course, everybody in the room naturally gravitated towards, 'Hey, we're an automobile company.' Nope, we're not. We're a technology company. And the room was silent for the moment. And he went on and he talked about how many computer systems are in a vehicle that's manufactured and what all these systems do and how they're interconnected and how they drive human behaviors. And the thing that was really provoking for me is how they were talking about moving towards a subscription model. So, think of it this way. Steve, you live in a nice warm climate. I do too where we don't have to deal with the adverse harsh winters anymore. But there's a couple days a year in the winter where we would love to have a heated steering wheel and maybe some heated seats. And what if we could subscribe to that for a couple of days, weeks, a month, and all of a sudden the technology just gets turned on. That was really impactful for me because I was thinking differently about technology. And so I carried that forward in my career. And when I joined Jack Henry many years ago, they are a very conservative company that supports financial services clients, banks, credit unions. When you think of the traditional banking experience, it is traditionally going into a branch and interacting on a human-to-human level. Think of the days where you would get paid with a piece of paper, a check. You would sign the back and you would walk in and hand it to a human that would deposit it into your account. And you walked out and you then began paying your bills through check writing. That wasn't that long ago, actually. Now, fast forward to today. Everyone, no matter how old they are, whether they're a young kid in high school, whether they're a college student, a newly married human, a grandparent, they're paying their bills online. They're using their mobile phone to conduct business. Those systems that we depend on, we rely on to drive an experience were never built for today's modern world. They were built for yesterday's world. They weren't even built for the internet, Steve. So, you know, to be able to help a company navigate through times of change and to be there to help people understand why that change is going to be meaningful and impactful in a good way and not a bad way was really rewarding.

Yeah, that's a really thought-provoking question. So, I have two thoughts there. First, in response to are you crazy? I think we're all a little crazy to some degree, but you have to be because you have to think about the art of the impossible and usually people say what is the art of the possible? What I'm saying is you have to expect the unexpected now. AI a couple of years old really but it is moving faster than any technology that I have seen in my 30 plus year career. I was there.

Nope. Absolutely not crazy. It is moving.

And Steve, here's the most important thing to remember. We have to embrace this as something that's going to help drive a positive outcome. We also have to keep in mind there are people out there that have malicious intentions and they will use this technology as a way to create fraudulent behaviors and activities. And so we always have to keep our guard up. And there's this balance. When I think of AI and I specifically think of the financial services industry, for me, the most important element of helping people get comfortable with this new technology is to come at it with a framework, a mindset of using it in a responsible, consistent manner. And that takes a lot of thought and it takes a lot of planning. Sure, it would be lovely to just rush right out and start using it, but you have to start thinking about how it's used, how it's consumed, how it's managed, and you have to have a framework and some governance around it.

Yeah. So, one of the things that gives me great joy is the ability to help someone and to teach someone and to learn from someone. And so, what I've come to understand over the multiple years of my career is that my career is a journey and along that journey were stops along the way. And I was blessed with being mentored by some incredibly knowledgeable and talented people. I was blessed with the opportunity to live abroad and experience different cultures and different approaches to solving problems and leading your life. So what leadership life and legacy is all about is sharing leadership concepts with people no matter what juncture and stage in their career they are. They could be learning as a new leader. They can be an experienced leader, an executive leader or points in between and then applying those leadership principles to your life. I mean, at the end of the day, Steve, we're all human beings just trying to make the world a better place. And we all have the same stresses and challenges, maybe at different times. And so, through the course of my life, I've experienced certain things that might be useful or helpful to you. And at the end of the day, you get further down the runway in your life and your career, you're building your legacy. And what you don't realize immediately but you realize down the road is your legacy was being built starting when you started your career, actually when you started your life. That's when people started to get to know you and understand what you stand for, what you believe in. So taking those three things together and bonding them together, I'm just there to share my journey and tell a story or two along the way. And my goal is to impact as many people in a positive way as possible. Along with the consulting and advisory services are fantastic.

I think it's just you're drinking from a fire hose. And of course, you know, I was taught growing up in the Midwest to eat every morsel that's put on my plate. The reality is the plate is just too large and I can only consume so much. So I think what we have to do is we have to manage some perspective. Give ourselves a little grace. Set ourselves up in meaningful junctures along the way. I learned something years ago. The way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. So start one bite at a time. Have a plan for how you want to embrace a new technology, in this case AI. Learn about it. Be curious. You know your book is intriguing to me. Failure is a natural part of life. It's a natural part of learning and growth. Without failure, you don't grow. Michael Jordan, you and I grew up in the Midwest. We watched probably what is largely going to be thought to be one of the best basketball players.

And I feel the same way. But think of it this way. Michael Jordan talked about this. He's missed more shots than he's taken in his career.

No. You know, Steve, the true mark of a person is often noted during the real challenging times, not when things are swimmingly good. You see the true mark of a human when they are put to the task. That's the true person that you're working with.

So I would tell them be curious. Ask questions. Ask the hard questions. Don't be afraid to fail. We talked about that, so I'll gloss over that. Keep learning. No matter how long you've been doing something, you can always get better. And for me, my goal when I get up in the morning is to never stop getting better. I want to continue to learn, apply what I'm learning, test what I'm learning, see what works, what doesn't. You know, some of the largest challenges we have as leaders is we use a script that works most of the time. But every now and again, we end up in a circumstance or a set of circumstances that that script doesn't work and we keep trying it again and again and again. Don't be afraid to try something completely different. Even if it feels awkward to you, makes you feel uncomfortable. It should be. That's what learning is about. You know, I used to lift weights, bodybuild, and I learned that the only way to build muscle and to get stronger was to tax yourself. And you get taxed to a point of being uncomfortable. You know, when you're doing a bench press and you're lifting that weight, you have a spotter. A good spotter is going to make you work for that rep. The same is the case in our professional lives. If you're building software, if you're building technology, migrating workloads from on-premise to the cloud, get comfortable with the uncomfortable.

That's my definition.

Yeah. So, I've learned a lot of lessons. I'm, as I said before the podcast, I'm a work in progress. My wife will be the first to tell you that. I think the hardest lesson I've learned as a CIO is that clarity isn't kindness. And I teach my leaders who aspire to be CIOs, CTOs one day. I ask them a key question. Do you want to be liked or do you want to be respected? You can't be both. And of course, naturally, most people want to be liked. It's just human nature. The reality is clarity is our duty and responsibility. You know, early on I made the mistake of assuming that talent and good intentions would basically carry me through. In reality, I avoided those tough conversations early on and it did myself a disservice. It did the people I was leading a disservice. I was thinking that it was more important to be an empathetic leader than a real leader, a real human that gave you the straight and narrow that you needed. And that's where I learned the concept of feedback is a gift. You might not like the gift. You don't have to use the gift. You can discard it. You can vehemently disagree with it, but it's a gift. Someone has bestowed that on you and you can use it to prompt thought and challenge yourself. So, that was probably the toughest lesson I learned early on. And had I not learned that lesson, I don't think I'd be where I am today because, you know, our chairman of the board at Jack Henry taught us one day in a leadership summit that it's lonely at the top. And I didn't fully appreciate what he was saying. I heard it before, but the higher up you go, once you get to the C-level, it is lonely up there.

Yeah, you know you're exactly right. Someone had created a meme for me when I first became a CIO many years ago and it said 'CIO career is dead' or 'career is over', sorry. And you know, there's an element of truth to that, but I always rise to the challenge. You know, when we talk about being brutally intentional with ourselves, when we look ourselves in the mirror, you know, part of leading people is dealing with a bit of ambiguity, a bit of uncertainty, and that usually brings what I refer to as misalignment. So whether that misalignment is on your strategy that you're trying to drive for your business or whether it's cultural or personal personality-wise, as an old infrastructure guy, there are seven layers of an OSI model which you are keenly aware of. There's also an eighth layer. The eighth layer is the human layer. And so oftentimes the eighth layer is where much of the misalignment is because you have personality conflicts and there are people that come to the table having to win at all costs and then you have other people that try to find common ground. You'll never have the same type of personality at the table. The point being is you as the leader have to drive alignment as quickly as possible because in my mind leadership isn't just about vision. It's about making the uncomfortable decisions that will preserve the trust and move the mission forward. Because if you're not trusted, you will not be successful in your job.

I think the hardest part is seeing that this transformation that's occurring from a technology perspective is catching people off guard. And I refer to it as I can lead a person to knowledge but I cannot make them think. Ultimately they have to think for themselves. And so what ultimately ends up happening is people get caught flat-footed and they can't get their balance again and then they end up becoming casualties for whatever reason. I know those are strong words but it's the reality of the circumstance we face. Think of it this way. If you're a person that's been working for 25 years and you probably have another 10 or 15 years left, depending on your personal situation, you have to reinvent yourself so that you can continue to bring value to a company. And if you don't, you're going to be left by the wayside. You think of all the jobs that are at risk right now. It's crazy. And it's not just in the technology sector. Right now, logistics companies are running driverless semis from Dallas to Houston and Houston back to Dallas every day of the week. They're testing that technology. So, if you drive a truck for a living, you're under assault. You have to learn something new.

For me, I would tell you to embrace it. I would tell you to use it. But what I would also tell you to do is trust and verify it. This is where the responsible use of AI comes in because we have seen epic failures with AI. Here's the reality. AI right now is plus or minus 95% accurate, meaning it produces a good outcome 95% of the time. Steve, would you board an airplane that lands successfully 95% of the time?

Absolutely not. So that 5% is what is going to allow the human in the loop to drive that 100% or close to 100% accuracy better, faster, more consistently.

Yeah. My advice is, and I alluded to this earlier, never stop learning. Come to work every day trying to get better. Don't get complacent. Don't accept your current state. Even though you've climbed that big mountain and you've looked down with fondness and appreciation, there's another mountain that needs to be climbed. And just keep pushing. And the more problems and obstacles you move out of your way, the more money you make. That's my two cents. Thank you so much.