Zinzino, Zinzone

Lo zinzino e lo zinzone. The tiny bit and the bunch of stuff

My former chairman and good friend Roberto Galimberti used to tell about the Zinzino and the Zinzone.

Zinzino is the tiny bit, the easy one, what customers buy, what people want, the core of it

Zinzone is the rest of the stuff, the difficult part, the context why customers buy, what moves the people, he rest of it…

You find the ZInzino and Zinzone situations everywhere.

Many tasks we take on follow the 90+90 law: making 90% of the task requires 90% of the time; making the other 10% requires another 90% of the time.

There’s this aphorism I often quote: “Things are always more complicated”. (Dunning-Kruger effect is a corollary, for people who don’t realize the Zinzino and the Zinzone)

Another aphorism: “politics is the art of possible”. The apparently “hard part” (the zinzino) is understandable, knowable, you can engineer it, etc. The really hard part is the Zinzone: making it possible (which requires an endless reworking to reach a consensus which is a function of time, pretty much like sin(x)/x, but with increased frequency as remaining time approaches to 0, with an increased energy consumption).
Understanding the future trajectory, when to stop pushing and when to stop nudging, letting things happen and focus on two steps beyond, is an art that old time politicians master.

As famed politician Andreotti said “It’s not difficult to be right. You need others to acknowledge it”.

The Zinzino and the Zinzone.

You should have got it by now. When you see a Zinzino, be aware there’s always a Zinzone.

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