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
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