The Devil Likes Details

The Devil Likes Details

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

The old expression “the devil is in the details” rings true for those of us who don’t pay attention until he comes   back to bite us.  When I untie my shoes, for instance, the knots on each shoe look exactly alike.  Apparently, they are not.  The laces on one shoe untie easily, but on the other they turn into a nasty knot.   Inevitably, I pull harder which just makes matters worse.  The details bedevil me, but as we discovered long ago, life is a minefield of details.  Even so, the smallest slices of life make a whole pie of enjoyment.

Why are details really quite positive?   Basketball coach John Wooden said, “It’s the little things that make big things happen.”  Coaches watch for details that can trigger a win or loss.  Novelist Ernest Hemmingway observed, “Every man’s life ends the same way.  It is only the details of how he lived and died that distinguish one man from another.”  We remember individuals based as much on personal details as on big accomplishments, and even at that the whole picture is a composite of myriad details.  Finally, philosopher Alfred North Whitehead noted, “We think in generalities, but we live in detail.”  Our big ideas become meaningful or life changing only as we hitch details to them.

Success in the business world hinges on attention to details.  In his study of corporations that upscaled from good to great, author Jim Collins pinpoints the importance of getting the right people on your figurative bus, getting the others off, and giving your best riders room to excel.  When I used to interview prospective employees, little details often influenced my thinking.  What was the condition of their shoes?  Did they dress appropriately for a business environment?  Did they look at me directly and shake hands firmly?  Did they say anything that showed me they had done their homework?

Details draw out clues to greatness.  Collins tells the story of a high school cross country running team that won multiple state championships even though many other teams trained just as hard.  The coaches had discovered that the team members ran best toward the end of each race or workout, so they measured not time splits, but rather place splits.  In other words, they looked at how many competitors team members passed during the last stages of a race.  Awards for passing provided incentives to excel.  Essentially, the team focused on a single measurable detail that led to winning rather than placing.  

Recently I read that goals will often take care of themselves when we work on the system that lies under them.  Systems feed on details.  The term bureaucracy comes to mind.  Anyone who has struggled with government mandates, civil service, or the military can already feel the frustration.  But bureaucracy is the operational method of most organizations.  Perhaps because high school civics courses seldom address this topic, young people who confront the world of accountability may conclude that bureaucrats are the enemy.  Instead they should be learning how to maneuver patiently through administrative complexity.  

Admittedly, bureaucracy can make delay the deadliest form of denial.  Yet when functioning properly, bureaucracy is efficient, predictable, impersonal, and fast. If we want things to run smoothly, trained administrators can work magic with the details.

As we age, details mysteriously evaporate.  The results can be disastrous.  For one thing, safety demands attention to them.  Airline pilots and doctors are acutely aware that flight

disasters and levels of hospital infection can be reduced dramatically when simple, sequential checklists of details are used.  As Atul Gawande writes in his book “The Checklist Manifesto”, such lists ensure that stupid but critical stuff is not overlooked, while making sure that people accept responsibility, discuss, and coordinate their efforts.  I always knew there were powerful reasons why my wife and I make lists of everything we must not forget to do. When it is not on the list, usually it won’t happen.  

 What details do we remember best?  Research suggests that memories usually lock in the details of the last scene in a movie, rather than what we see at the beginning or in the middle.  Also, we remember how we felt both before (predicting) and after (recalling) an experience more than how we felt when it actually occurred.  In other words, memories lie. Recording the factual details can be helpful.  Psychologist Daniel Gilbert cautions young people not to accept the recollections of experienced experts at face value because “we tend to remember the best of times and the worst of times instead of the most likely of times.”

Despite the dysfunctions of memory, details found in the midst of an experience can nurture happiness in the long run.  Several years ago we visited a breeder of Labrador retrievers.  She showed us a new litter of five black puppies, and, of course, we fell in love with all of them.  We noticed that one was bigger than the others, and a friend suggested that probably he got a bigger share of mother’s milk because he bullied the others aside. Another, said the breeder, was a snuggler.  She picked him up and he rested contentedly upside down in her arms and looked at us.  We chose him.  The details mattered, and to this day they still do.

JMB

7/7/2017