Details! Details! Sometimes rising in the ranks – to work with leaders and BE a leader – is a fine balance between understanding details and letting them go. Mary helps us walk this line by looking at world-class leaders, and at herself. – InPower Editors
[Tweet “Details matter. It’s worth waiting to get it right.-Steve Jobs”]
I know nothing about cars. When I bought my first car at 40, I went to buy a car like I buy everything else – I started my search online, just to browse. I called one of my friends who knows a lot about cars and asked him which brands should I look at if I wanted a high-quality, moderately priced new or used car. I continued searching online to see what was available. I talked to some friends who owned Mini Coopers and Volkswagens, and luckily got to drive a Ford Focus as a rental to get experience with it.
I found a used car online that I liked – a little red Mini Cooper Convertible. At the dealer, I test drove the car, liked the experience, and then purchased. I didn’t really know what I was looking for in a car. I based my decision on looks, quality, guarantees and warranties.
About 6 months later I had a problem with my engine. What should have cost $5,000 cost me only $500 because I bought a Pre-owned Certified Mini Cooper and the extended warranty. Sure, the problem probably could have been avoided if I knew more about how cars worked and looked under the hood before I bought it, but I knew that I had no car knowledge, so I had to compensate for that by getting a quality product with guarantees.
Any time I make a decision that involves money – personal or work-related – I try to fully understand what I am getting into, which means that I need to understand the details.
And if I don’t understand the details – or don’t have time to learn what they are – I either:
- trust someone’s advice
- make decisions that cover my lack of knowledge
[Tweet “Is leadership is about having vision & letting go of the details? v @mfbrodie”]
We have been led to believe that leadership is about having a vision and letting the team get into the details. But if you don’t understand how something works, how can you decide to change it? How can you make the best decisions to make a difference? How do you make your vision real if you don’t understand how things work?
The irony is that some of the most successful leaders of our time were obsessive about the details to the point they were considered micromanagers. Steve Jobs is an example. In his New York Times article “What Makes Steve Jobs Great,” Joe Nocera detailed not only Jobs’ visionary genius but also his quest for perfection. The iPhone glass story is a great example of a visionary leader getting into the details to make success. Steve tested the phone to see how it worked for daily use and found that the plastic was getting scratched. He found that unacceptable. He demanded the face be changed to glass to make it a better product experience.
Sure, one could say he was being a stickler for details. You could also say he was obsessed with quality. However, you could say that he was obsessed with the details because he wanted his product to succeed. If he didn’t use that iPhone and didn’t get into the details of the glass face and the manufacturing, he wouldn’t have made that decision to use glass. Subsequently, the iPhone design wouldn’t have dominated the market as it has today.
Perfection can hinder a business, especially if a team gets too caught up in process details. However, there is a different type of perfection and detailed understanding that leaders need to have intuitively to run an effective team – and that’s the ability to know how to get to the right information to make the right decisions for success.
Lesser known Robert Nardelli, CEO at XLR-8, has similar views. He said:
In fact, it’s the details that help you do what you do! I am extremely detail oriented, with an almost childlike level of inquisitiveness, and those traits have served me well. The practice has allowed me to not just accept the 40,000-foot response to a 1-foot question. Don’t Give Me the High Points. I Want the Details.
I think there has been confusion about executives not wanting to hear the details and just getting a high-level picture. I have often been asked question that are very detailed by executives who want to understand how something really works. I think most executives just want your recommendations with facts to back them up. They want—and need—your counsel because they can’t dig into all of the details all of the time by themselves. And they understand that they can’t make accurate decisions without having all of the facts.
And it makes sense—how do you know which steps to take if you don’t fully understand the situation you are facing?
You don’t need to know everything personally—I didn’t know much about cars to get a car that was reliable and stylish—but I needed to know enough to ask people questions, know how to research, know my weaknesses, and find ways to cover them. Steve Jobs did that with the iPhone. I’m sure Robert at XLR-8 does that as well. That is getting into the details—and that’s key to making any decision.
