Principles in Practice

Developing Attention to Detail

Do you have difficulty translating your ideas into practice? The world often seems to be full of big thinkers. These visionaries dream big dreams and try to motivate people to achieve those dreams. But how many people actually translate those big dreams into reality? Not all that many, right? Far too often our dreams and aspirations never bear fruit. Do you know why?

Sweating the Small Stuff

The big picture is vital and so are implementation strategies. But unless we attend to the tactical details that put hands and feet on those strategies, they will come to naught. All our enthusiasm can be wasted if we do not know how to move from the idea to its implementation.

I think the primary problem is a lack of discipline. By and large, that discipline involves a commitment to doing the little things that in the end add up to the big thing - the achievement of the vision.

There are a number of things that must be done to move from vision to reality. A strategy must be developed, a tactical plan must be designed, and timetables need to be established. People need to be assigned to implement the details of the tactical plan.

Fleshing Out the Big Picture

Only a few small businesses in the United States survive their first five years--perhaps less than 10%. I think most of those failures result from lack of definition. The visionaries have not really defined what they want to accomplish or how they will accomplish it. Almost all want to make a profit. However, they have not thought through what need they will serve to produce the profit, or they lack sufficient start up resources or capital, or they fail to develop a viable tactical plan.

My father was a frustrated person. At the end of his life, he could not point to the achievement of any life goals. One reason was that he never spent enough time defining those goals. He had lots of ideas, but he never developed any of them. I remember one he mentioned often. In the days when picture shows opened onto the sidewalks of major city streets, he thought it would be a great marketing technique to show parts of the movie on a video screen on the sidewalk. Apparently someone else thought so, too, because today in the lobbies of multi-screen theaters you can see movie previews. Yet my father cannot take credit for that marketing approach. He did not possess the attention to detail that it took to either sell someone else on the idea or to develop it himself.

Counting the Cost

Once you have determined your intended outcome, you need to begin the process of building detail into your vision. The Bible tells us in Luke 14:28 that at this point we need to determine whether the ultimate result is worth the cost of getting there.

At this juncture, as Christians, we enjoy an incredible advantage. For us the real question is not (or should not be) whether the enterprise has enough potential for profit to justify the cost, but whether God wants us to do it. If you are committed to being obedient to God, and if He does want you to do it, then by definition it is worth the cost. You just have to decide whether you are willing to pay the price.

If you know because you have prayed and gotten God's go-ahead that God does want you to develop your idea, you have already demonstrated some attention to detail. You may not have much detail, but you have exercised the discipline of prayer that certainly suggests at least a willingness to be attentive to detail.

Unlike nonbelievers, no Christian needs to project the cost of development to know whether to proceed. Nevertheless, a Christian needs to project the cost of development to know how to proceed. I am afraid that one of the reasons that many Christians are not as competitive in business as many nonbelievers is that they assume because they know what God wants them to do, they can simply proceed to do it. The truth is that they must invest as much time and effort as anyone else to learn how God wants them to do it.

Delegating and Following Through

You may have to delegate responsibility and authority to others to bring your vision to reality. Unless you have developed a well thought out plan that proves you can do it by yourself, you should accept the fact that you will need assistance from others. Seldom is a good idea so small that it can be accomplished without help.

If you do need to delegate, remember that you remain the person ultimately responsible for whether your delegate's performance is satisfactory. You must monitor your assistant's actions closely enough to recover if he or she lets you down. You need to follow through on those things you have delegated until you know your delegate is reliable in each area you have assigned. Further, if you find it difficult to hold delegates accountable, you need someone working for you who can do this well.

At the same time, you must realize that your delegate needs sufficient authority to handle the job. It does you no good to delegate responsibility to someone if you are going to exercise such close oversight that you might as well do it yourself. The balance between delegation and accountability is often a fine one, and it will take some experience to get it right. Until you find the proper balance, your risk of failure is greater and your cost of success may be higher than you anticipated.

Thinking Things Through

Unless you form the routine and discipline of thinking things through on a regular basis, you will never reach your potential in attending to detail. And if you do not master the ability to be attentive to detail, you will never reach your potential in life, or in achieving God's plan for your life. That is not to say that if you are not a detail person, that you must become one. But to some degree, each of us must master the details in our lives.

To master details, establish a regular time each day to review the events of the past day and consider your course of action for the coming day. Combine this planning time with a regular time for listening to God for whatever direction He has for you for the day. It is an unbeatable combination.

From that beginning you can move into making lists of the details in your life that need attention, including the details of moving your visions and dreams into concrete reality. You can begin to focus on the habits and routines that need to be formed and those that need to be discarded.

If you are not a detail person, I suggest you form a close relationship with someone who is. Choose a model and make yourself accountable to him or her. You will both benefit from the association. If you have difficulty even wanting to become more attentive to detail, ask God to give you an enthusiasm for it. Ask Him to supernaturally give you the desire and the anticipation that accompanies becoming obedient in an area of disobedience.

Details truly can make the difference between success and failure. Developing attention to detail can determine whether your dreams come to fruition or linger only in your imagination.

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