When it comes to pursuing professional success in our careers and side endeavours, it’s common for us to get caught up in looking at the “big picture” stuff.
We may spend a lot of our time visualising exactly how we want things to pan out over the next five years, and we may get very invested in our “master plans” for comprehensively revolutionising our industry.
That’s all well and good, and it can certainly be useful to have an ambitious vision to orient yourself.
All the same, it’s often attention to the small details that really makes the difference on a day-to-day basis.
Here are a few reasons to pay attention to the small stuff in your professional life.
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Because systems typically fail at their weakest link
The most ambitious and comprehensive systems will inevitably fail at their weakest link, when they fail at all. In this sense, they are exactly like the chains that give us the metaphor of the “weakest link” in the first place.
If your business runs like a well-oiled machine, but has a certain vulnerability to inclement weather conditions, you can be sure that it’s only a matter of time before things fall apart due to a sudden cold snap. To prevent something like that from happening, click here for cut-to-length heat line.
It’s not impossible – or even necessarily desirable – to try and iron out every single kink in your business. But you need to be aware of the seemingly small and mundane chinks in your armour that may be the basis for more serious issues.
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Because it is often difficult to tangibly alter large-scale factors – but relatively easy to alter small-scale ones
One of the things about large-scale, big-picture systems and factors in your business, is that they are often very difficult to change outright. Any change you do work on them will necessarily have to happen slowly, and via a focus on its various constituent parts.
Think about the metaphor of a speedboat versus a cruise ship. The speedboat may seem puny compared to the cruise ship, but when it needs to change direction, it can do it in a split second. The cruise ship, on the other hand, takes a long time to turn.
For your business to thrive, you will need to be constantly adjusting the direction of things – and the best way to do this is by focusing on the smaller-scale elements.
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Because allowing things to slip with regards to the “small stuff” often leads to a negative domino effect over time
It’s not just that your business is likely to be most vulnerable in some of the overlooked “small areas,” it’s also that the process of falling into a negative spiral almost always happens, first and foremost, by allowing the “small stuff” to slip.
Maybe tomorrow you put off filling in a certain spreadsheet that you know you should deal with more promptly. Then, the day after, you open the shop a bit late.
In a remarkably short space of time, these sorts of little “slips” can trigger a negative domino effect, where so many things are going wrong at once, that your entire business may be in jeopardy.
