You may have heard that a failure to plan is nothing more than a plan to fail. Ray Zinn puts his hard earned life experience out there and proves what you get if you fail to plan is a pipe-dream and surefire disappointment.
Rob Artigo: Good to be back. You have a series of books. You have Zen of Zinn one, two and three, and I picked up Zen of Zinn one and went to page 110, and I found this particular writing, which I thought was interesting. It was thought-provoking and I thought made a worthy podcast. You wrote, “The difference between a goal and a plan is that a goal is what we want to accomplish, and a plan is the way we accomplish the goal. Many of us have goals, but no plan to accomplish their goals. A goal without a plan is just wishful thinking.” And also you’ve said, and you wrote in your book, The Essential Leader, “That a goal without a plan is not a plan.”
Ray Zinn: They call it a pipe dream, Rob.
Rob Artigo: Yeah. Where does this come from? I mean, we’re in business and various leadership roles and throughout our lives we had to do different things, but the goal changes at times. The way to achieve the goal doesn’t change, right?
Ray Zinn: That’s interesting. Let’s just go back to when I started my company. So my goal was to run my own company. That was my goal. I mean, I wanted to start a company to see if I could make it successful, and so that was my goal. But then I said, “Okay, so now what kind of company do I want to found, do I want to start?” And so I tried about three or four different things to start my company. So my plan was then to get it started and to come up with a product. So I did that. That one didn’t work out. So then I scrapped that one and I went to another one and that one didn’t work out. And I said, “Scrap that one.” As I said, I tried four different approaches before I got one that really was successful. You would say, “Well, wow, your goal was to start a company and you did that, but your plan evidently wasn’t all that successful because you had to do four different companies before you got one that worked.”
Well, that’s the way sometimes things work. If I married the first girl I dated, I’d be a polygamist today. So we do things by trying. If you just have a goal without an effort to try to do something that becomes, like I said, a pipe dream. In other words, you’re just wishful thinking. Even though it may not be successful, you want to move forward, you want to set forth an effort that will result in you either learning that that’s not a good one or that is a good one, and so that you can build on it.
When I started those four companies, I thought each one of them was going to be a success. Just like when I said dating again, I thought my first date, that’s the girl I’m going to marry kind of thing. But I’ve dated hundreds of girls, and so you find out that not necessarily the first girl you date is the one you’re going to marry. And so it’s the same thing with starting a company. You might find out that the first company you start is not necessarily the one you’re going to marry. I kept trying and trying and trying, and then I finally ended up with one that I could bring forth success.
Rob Artigo: Well, yeah, you’re talking about in business, in jobs, in life, so in managing your life, goals are everything. And then having a plan, and you had a plan going into, as you were getting older, aging into your late teens and you’re thinking about dating, you’re planning on your future. You had an idea of what you were going to do. You were going to date and find your way, but you were not going to settle for anything but what you really, really wanted. And so your goal was established with your plan, which was to make sure that you didn’t make a mistake and marry the first person that you met.
Ray Zinn: Well, I’ve been married for 64 years and so that took some effort to bring it together, but I finally found the right combination and that turned out to be successful. When I started Micrel, same thing. I didn’t know that we were going to last 37 years as a company, but I kept working at it and it became a success over time. Whereas the other three companies that I started, we could call them a divorce actually, as you would because I divorced myself from that idea and moved on to another one.
So it doesn’t mean that just because you’re not successful in your first idea, your approach means you’re not going to be successful in the long run. The whole purpose of this podcast is to talk about turning your dreams into a reality. Turn your dreams into a reality, so that becomes a success, whether it’s your first marriage, your second marriage, hopefully not more than two. You want to turn that relationship into a long-lasting one. Thank goodness I only been married once and married for 64 years, so that turned out to be successful, but I wanted it to succeed. Did we have any bumps in the road and any times when we thought we were upside down? Yeah, sure. But we overcome them. We straighten them out and move forward because we’re human and we make mistakes and we have to recover from those mistakes.
Rob Artigo: I think that attitude that you just described there is a good thing to have built into any plan, whether it’s for business or in life, is that be ready to expect ups and downs and the things that might help you survive those dips, if you will, right?
Ray Zinn: Well, and have the ability, for example, if you started a company that was going to take more money than you had then you obviously didn’t plan very well because you have to look at what you can afford as you move forward, whether it be a wife or a girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever, you got to make sure you can afford what you’re going to do. And so taking off in a business venture without sufficient funds to see it to completion, that’s stupidity. So again, make sure you have the wherewithal to accomplish the goal that you’ve set for yourself.
Rob Artigo: Thanks, Ray. Great conversation. And the listeners can join us at toughthingsfirst.com if they have questions or comments. Please follow Ray on X and on Facebook and also LinkedIn and check out Ray’s books, Tough Things First and the Zen of Zinn series one, two, and three, and on sale now, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader Thanks, Ray.
Ray Zinn: Thank you, Rob.
