Unforced Errors

Tough Things First

They are the errors that can do you in and you will have nobody to blame but yourself. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn defines what an unforced error is in the business word and what you can do to save yourself before they happen.

---

Rob Artigo: Ray, I was reading Zen of Zinn 3, in fact, right from page 191 it caught my attention. You wrote about unforced errors, define what an unforced error is.

Ray Zinn: Okay. It’s an error that you made that you weren’t forced to make. In other words, you did it because of just your lack of skill or paying attention to the problem, it end up being an unforced error.

Rob Artigo: Yeah. They actually track this stat in tennis and it’s interesting they go, “Okay. Well, let’s put up on the screen there’s Jones and Johnson, and this is how many unforced errors Johnson has. This is how many unforced error Jones has.” And they look at that as a comparison to be illustrative of what is an example of how they’re failing or succeeding. What are some of the reasons why they’re not doing well is usually the person with the most unforced errors is losing in the match. Not always, but that’s the case. But what you wrote was specifically saying it’s a sports analogy, but in reality, this is something that occurs in business life and personal lives. We can run into this situation where we have unforced errors.

Ray Zinn: It’s like a mistake. In other words, you made a mistake. Maybe you played too close to the net and maybe you were swinging with your wrong hand at that particular ball. Or the same thing in basketball or football. I mean, we see unforced errors in life, meaning these are just mistakes, and to avoid mistakes you don’t want to repeat them. So as you pointed out in this example of tennis, the more unforced errors you have it means you make lots of mistakes. You may be a superb forehand or backhand slammer, but if you make too many unforced errors, you’re more likely to lose the match. It doesn’t matter how smart or how glib or capable you are if you’re making lots of mistakes, that’s going to cover up all the good stuff you’re doing. As they say, one rotten apple will spoil a barrel is a case of one unforced error can do more damage than a bunch of good slams that you did.

Rob Artigo: I think of it Ray, as the one way of looking at an unforced error is the person who drives their car around with the indicator getting closer to E and getting closer to E, and getting closer to E and going, “I’ll go get gas the first thing I do tomorrow morning.” And then they go and get in their car and they don’t make it to the gas station. That’s an unforced error. That’s where they just simply were not responsible about taking care of something early enough. That’s a mistake that should have been avoided, and basically, that’s the kind of mistake you’re talking about here is one that should have been avoided.

Ray Zinn: Yeah. The ones, if you had paid attention, you wouldn’t have made it. Or if you were trying to gamble, let’s say you were trying to gamble on something that’s still an unforced error. You want to be prudent in the risks that you take and not unprudent. Because an unprudent error is a unforced error because somebody didn’t make you make that mistake. You did it either because you were not watching what you’re doing or you’re taking too big of a risk, but you want to avoid unforced errors because the greater your unforced errors are, especially those that don’t get resolved, the greater chance you have of failing.

Rob Artigo: Yeah. And you mentioned in other podcasts about how our lives behind the scenes can have negative impacts on our companies and our businesses. In Essential Leadership, a book that you’ve got coming out soon, we spent a lot of time talking about that and being responsible for those sorts of things. The bottom line is that unforced errors can be very costly and a person who has the most unforced errors is not going to be considered much of a leader.

Ray Zinn: We know a lot of people in public life that didn’t know their little unforced error was going to be such a damaging thing, but you got to watch what you do and watch what you say because with today’s technology, it’s saved and it’ll come back to bite you. You can do all the deleting you want and hopefully, nobody will find out your unforced error, but they will. It will come back.

Rob Artigo: Yeah. The one thing you don’t want to do is wake up in the morning going, hopefully, that won’t happen because it will probably-

Ray Zinn: It will.

Rob Artigo: … happen.

Ray Zinn: Exactly.

Rob Artigo: Yeah.

Ray Zinn: You can’t hide an unforced error.

Rob Artigo: Well, to our listeners, thank you for listening to the Tough Things First podcast, the home for Ray Zinn the longest-serving CEO in Silicon Valley history, author of the book Tough Things First, also the great series, Zen of Zinn, which is 1, 2, and 3 books we’ve all mentioned in this podcast here, and we appreciate you being around to listen. Please rate the podcast, it’s a fast-growing podcast for Silicon Valley. Really popular these days, and we appreciate you being here. Thanks, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks again, Rob.