My fascination with the level of impact details make on our lives continues.
When a company or organization grows, there are more things to take care of. More details to pay attention to leading to the hiring of more people.
We get frustrated when we have too much to do saying that we do not have enough “bandwith” to pay attention to everything (and the details inside of each). There are simply too many details to attend to at one time.
Nuance and context never fully develop until one spends time learning, questioning, and going deep into a situation. Only by seeing & understanding details can one begin to stitch together the perspective needed to plan your next steps more effectively.
Problems surface hitting us in the face unexpectedly. Trained to look for the root cause, one often finds someone has missed the attention to detail needed to keep something from happening. Those responsible for overseeing another’s efforts become deflated when they too learn that their inattention to detail as well broke a quality control point set up to prevent it from happening.
Money problems creep up on us because we don’t pay attention to the details comprised of our sources of income versus our spending. Never understanding the imbalance caused by too much spending leads to financial struggles.
There are many tactics or methodologies that specifically focus us on detail. Creating budgets, designing experiments, emphasis on key performance metrics, kanban boards, goal setting, food tracking to lose weight, habit tracking to help build our muscles for repetitive behavior, reading for pleasure or knowledge, Why even Google or Amazon searches are a quest to gather details.
Meetings lend themselves to sharing details. Specifically used to share details before making decisions. To focus participants on details before forming next steps so as to try to minimize risk caused by faulty thinking.
Evidence of attention to detail is a time honored way to judge the quality of any type of work, person or organization. Where do we fall on this spectrum? What frustrates us when it comes to details? How do we balance the need to focus on detail against our desire to keep our lives fluid and moving with the fast pace that our schedules demand?
As you see, details are interwoven into all parts of our lives. Attention to details can lead to action & improvement as easily as to dysfunction when not considered or attended to. Understanding this bipolar identity of details is important for us to consider as we start our next day. Once again, challenging us to choosing wisely.