“The difference between something good and something great is attention to detail.” – Charles Swindoll
I have this saying hanging on my office wall to remind me to put in the hard work it takes to produce something great. Everything we produce in life from the shortest e-mail to our life’s masterpiece is the product of a string of small decisions and actions. These minutiae may seem inconsequential in and of themselves, but they are the building blocks of the product we seek to produce.
I like to think of attention to detail as ”execution integrity”. Integrity is typically thought of as doing the right thing in our lives even when people aren’t looking. Integrity is really about having principles and standards in life and choosing to govern every little decision we make in life by those principles.
Attention to detail in our work is no different. We have to develop a set of principles to work by (standards), and then discipline ourselves to apply those standards in every action we take throughout the day. The end result will be a consistent product that does more than look good on the outside, it is truly great.
