“You have to sweat the small stuff, because sometimes it turns out the small stuff is actually the big stuff.”
—Kamala Harris
You’ve probably heard of the saying, “How you do anything is how you do everything.”
Personally, I find that a bit extreme. I don’t think we need to pour the exact amount of time, effort, and attention into every single task we do. That would be ridiculous. But I do think we need to be mindful of doing the smaller, less important tasks at least somewhat properly.
Years ago, my family doctor told me a little story that illustrates the importance of doing the small stuff properly. This was years ago, back when doctors offices still used physical file folders. My doctor had come into the examining room to see me. He looked frustrated, so I asked him what was wrong.
“I couldn’t find your file,” he said. “We have a summer student working here right now who wants to get into med school. Their job this summer is to file, but they are doing a lousy job of it! I suspect they think filing is beneath them. But here’s how I see it: if they can’t bother to put a patient’s file in the proper alphabetical place in the filing system, what does this say about the level of care and attention they’ll give to a patient’s actual health issues, when the time comes?”
That story stuck with me. And I come across some variation of it—the lack of attention to detail—in the operations of my own business now. I will sometimes get an initial introductory text from someone who wants to work for (or with) me—but I can scarcely decipher the meaning of their message because the grammar, punctuation, and spelling is so bad!
Would I hire them, or work with them in some capacity? Nope.
Or, as another example, I recently hired someone to do a contract job for me. It was a simple (and small) but important and time-sensitive task. I paid them a fair chunk of change to do it—but then had to ask multiple times for it to be completed!
Would I hire them again for a bigger task? Nope.
We don’t need to pour the exact same level of care and attention into every single task we do. But we do need to be mindful about making sure the basics are at least done properly.
Sloppiness in the small things may or may not might be a sign of things to come for the big stuff. But I’m not going to stick around and find out by giving someone a second chance, when there are so many other talented, skilled and organized people out there who will do a great job—on every type of work task given to them.
“When you pay attention to detail, the big picture will take care of itself.”
Georges St-Pierre
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