Professional Speaker on the Economy and Markets
Jim Zitek is a well regarded speaker on the topics of critical thinking skills and the economy and markets. This web site covers his current speaking topics.
Jim Zitek is also an investment advisor with Feltl & Company, a Minneapolis based securities and investment-banking firm where he manages individual accounts using a top-down approach to portfolio management.
He also writes two, e-mail publications: Economic Update and Market Update.
Critical Thinking Skills Will Help You Make Better Decisions
Good decision makers, those who make correct decisions in a timely manner, are more successful and sought after employees. The problem of course is that making good decisions is very difficult to do. One reason is that the information and data points used to make decisions is often flawed.
Unless you do your own primary research, much of your information comes from and is filtered by the media. Media information is often over-dramatized, misinterpreted, over-simplified or simply incorrect. Headlines and sound bites do not provide adequate information or analysis. Consequently, media stories can lead you down the wrong path.
I have learned that you simply can't read more or watch more TV and expect to be better informed. To be better informed and make better decisions, you need to use a Critical Thinking Process that will give you more accurate, reasoned information.
The critical thinking process I use is simply to tear an article or story into its parts; analyze the parts and then reassemble the article, but in a more informed way. Following are the seven steps.
1. Identify the argument (issue, conclusion and reasons used)
2. Define the ambiguous words
3. Uncover author's assumptions
4. Examine the evidence (fallacies, evidence, statistics)
5. Identify missing information
6. Determine causes and effects
7. Conclusions
Using this process results in the kind of information and data points you need to make better decisions.
Choose from three different presentations
1. Help. The News Is Driving Me Crazy
This presentation explains why the information from the media is often unreliable and what to look out for. It discusses a practical, seven-step, critical thinking process anyone anyone can use to get at the real story behind the news. It concludes by defining decision-making and how critical thinking can make one a better decision maker. This presentation is also interactive and allows the audience to participate in the presentation/discussion.
2. A Critical Thinking Process That Develops Better Decision Makers
This presentation covers why critical thinking is such an important ingredient in today's decision making process. Unlike the other two presentations, this presentation focuses on and explains the Critical Thinking Process in considerably more depth. Participants gain a more complete and detailed understanding of the steps involved in the critical thinking process. This presentation is also interactive and allows the audience to participate in the presentation/discussion.
3. It’s Not Your Nightly News
This presentation covers the "news" in a way you will not see or read about in your daily paper. This presentation exposes the audience to some of the problems of media information and discusses the critical thinking process; but, it' focus is on applying critical thinking skills to some of the major issues of the day. The issues covered can be selected ahead of time or at the start of the presentation by the participants themselves (see audience response system below.) See current presentations page for more details. This presentation makes extensive use of the audience response system.
More information about each presentation is available on the Presentations Page.
All presentations give your audience the opportunity for active participation.
In addition to interesting and informative content, I use a special audience response system that gives audiences an opportunity for active participation and contribution. I ask a question and the audience responds using a hand held keypad. My computer then gathers all responses and displays the results in table or graph form in seconds. This gives the audience the opportunity for active participation. You get presentations that live up to your audiences' expectations.
If you are looking for a speaker that will give your audience something to talk about for a long time, please give me a call at 612-978-7222 or e-mail me at jim@zitek.net for more information or to book a specific date.
