Seasoned Investment Executive,
Keynote Speaker, Writer on the Economy and Markets
Jim Zitek is a well regarded, keynote speaker on the topics of Critical Thinking Skills and applying those skills to the economy and markets. This web site covers his current speaking topics.
Jim is also an Investment Executive with Felt & Company, a Minneapolis based securities and investment-banking firm He is a political agnostic but his economic orientation is capitalist or the Austrian School of Economics.
He also writes and publishes a "no holds bared" e-mail newsletter: Economic Update and a blog: Paradigm Adjustment.
Jim can be reached at 612-424-5335 or e-mail him at: jim@zitek.net
Most Popular Keynote Speeches
1. Help. The New Is Driving Me Crazy!
It's time to stop talking back to the TV and throwing the newspaper against the wall. This keynote presentation explains why information from the media, our major source of information, is often sensationalized, shallow, ideologically biased, misleading and very often not even relevant. It is up to the reader or viewer to untangle this information before using it.
That’s why this keynote speech, “Help. The News Is Driving Me Crazy!” is so valuable for anyone who has to make difficult decisions. Surprisingly, it's not political bias that's the major problem; it's often just not written very accurately or clearly. Consequently, much of the information you receive from the media can be harmful to your business or your financial health.
This keynote speech is based on many years of experience developing and using my Critical Thinking Process. It is easy-to-understand, fast paced and filled with surprises. Plus, the information and the process can be put to work immediately.
2. How Leaders Turn Conflict Into Consensus
Outstanding leaders have a vision of the future and are capable of persuading others to follow them in that vision. This is as true for problem solving and planning as well as for the corporate mission. The major problem in achieving this goal is that it doesn’t seem to matter what the argument is about or what the facts are because everyone thinks they have the same “data.” Most of the time, however, they do not. That's why you usually end up with different, even opposite solutions, policies and conclusions. But, it doesn’t have to be that way.
My keynote speech, “How Leaders Turn Conflict Into Consensus,” explains why this happens and the steps you need to take to reach consensus. We discuss the problems with data and why it's often not objective, why they may not be focused on the real issue, and why data interpretation is faulty or derived from personal bias. Using critical thinking skills, we can get everyone on the same page, with the same information and working together to reach consensus.
3.The Real Story. No Headlines. No Sound Bites.
When you need information on an issue, you need more than headlines and sound bites. You need the full story and in context. Most of time however, the issue is too complicated to explain within the confines of one story so you have to build on each story to get the complete answer.
This keynote speech, “Real Stories. No Headlines. No Sound Bites” uses critical thinking skills to dissect and analyze a variety of current, relevant issues facing the economy and the markets. For example: what drives economic growth (GDP), the global debt crisis including the U.S. Government, corporate and consumer debt, the crippled housing industry, high unemployment, oil prices, or pending inflation.
The only goal is reality not political correctness, so the audience may not hear their version of the story; but they will hear a hard-edged, objective overview of the selected issues that will give them a new perspective and a better understanding of each issue.
“Jim Zitek and his topic of Critical Decision Making was a perfect fit for our Summit Conference. He got our attendees to think.”
More information about each presentation is available on the Presentations Page.
Call 612-424-5335 for date availability Or E-mail Jim Zitek at jim@zitek.net
A Critical Thinking Process That Will Make You A Better Decision Maker
I started my career in advertising as a writer and later went into management. I loved every minute of it. I thought positioning concepts, framing issues, great headlines and parsing words was the road to success and it was for quite some time. But over the years, I also developed a passion for the stock market so I sold my stock in the company and joined one of my clients, a regional, rapidly growing brokerage firm, as a stockbroker.
As you can imagine, it didn’t take long before I realized that message positioning, issue framing, sensational headlines and parsed words could also be the path to ruin.
So after the market kicked me around for a while and I screamed a few expletives, I realized that simply reading more or watching more TV couldn’t fill my information gap. I had to find a way to turn “news” into real, usable information. To really gain insight and knowledge, I had to stop simply absorbing the news and start challenging the news: That meant what? Why wasn’t this mentioned? Why was this set of statistics used? You get the idea. I had to become an aggressive reader and listener. Not to be negative, but to uncover the real story. The market doesn’t care about your biases or your feelings; it’s non-partisan and only cares about reality.
So I started to develop my own critical thinking model. I needed to find a process I could use repeatedly to “attack” any story and turn misleading or inaccurate information into knowledge I could use for analysis, scenario development and decision-making. Following is a list of the seven-step process I use. Try it; I think you will like it.
1. Identify the argument (what is the issue, the conclusion and reasons the author used to justify the conclusion)
2. Define ambiguous concepts and words (is the author’s definition and yours identical, you had better find out)
3. Uncover the author's assumptions (we tend to look at things with from an historical reference or bias; if you don’t know the author’s, it will be harder to separate fact from fiction)
4. Examine the evidence (will the evidence hold up under examination, is the logic of the authors argument valid, were the statistics used properly)
5. Identify missing information (usually time or space is a constraint on any story, so what didn’t the author state or explain)
6. Determine causes and effects (we know causes are hard to identify, there is almost always more than one and they are usually multi-dimensional)
7. Draw conclusions (at this point, you can agree or disagree with the author’s view of the argument, or look for additional possibilities or answers)
This process, or one like it, results in more accurate information. The kind of information and data points you need to make better decisions.
Jim can be reached at 612-424-5335 or by e-mail at: jim@zitek.net
