What happened to "attention to detail"?

Reader,

Throughout the spring and early summer, I plan to rotate between two types of emails:

• Lighter topics that touch on culture, engagement, and energy in your team
• The tougher challenges that perplex, frustrate, and bring leaders to the brink

This one is the latter.

I'll begin with an all-too-familiar story.
​
Maybe you can relate.

The scenario.

You’re working with your team on an important project. It must be done right because, as the leader, you know there’s always a cost to mistakes, errors, and work that just isn’t up to par.

Your team submits something for your review. It seems like a good start at first, but then… typos and glaring mistakes -- and you’re only on slide 4.

You send it back and ask them to bring it to you when they’re ready. But with each round, there are still mistakes. Now, you’re really frustrated.

Do they not see it? Do they not care?

In these situations, your mind starts trying to make sense of what’s happening:

• Maybe they don’t see the details. You’re not sure how, because they are so obvious to you, but it’s possible.
• Maybe they don’t think details matter. Maybe they’ve never had to carry the consequences of getting them wrong.
• Maybe they don’t care. This one is the hardest to reconcile. Why would they do the work at all if they don’t care?

And the worst part is what it does to trust.

The next time you review their work, you’re not starting fresh. You’re carrying all the previous experiences with you. So you start to wonder:

• Is attention to detail a lost skill?
• Does this generation still take pride in their work?
• Do they not equate “very important” with “getting the details right”?
• Are schools and employers failing them?
• Can I trust any of my younger team members to produce quality work?

Generalizations? Yes.
Unfair? Maybe.
Real? Absolutely.

Every leader I know is dealing with this in some form: "How do I raise the quality of work without losing momentum, trust, or my own sanity?"

Learning attention to detail.

Do you remember how you first learned to care about the details?

It probably wasn’t from a checklist or a training. It was from frustrating, challenging, real-life moments that stuck with you.

Here are a few of mine:

Learning to see details:​
I was walking down the hall with my boss when he casually bent down to pick up a few scraps of paper. He didn’t say anything, but I noticed.

Learning that details shape your reputation:
​A CEO once showed me a spelling mistake in a letter I had sent on his behalf. The recipient had circled it and sent it back to him, asking why we weren't double-checking our work.

Learning to find missing details:
​I sat in my boss’s office until 7pm one night perfecting an email (that was already good), checking every single word, every punctuation mark, forwards and backwards.

Learning that details create clarity:
​I delivered a training and left out a key piece. Amidst the confusion, questions, and blank stares, I had to scramble to recover and try to fill in the gaps while everyone watched.

In most of these situations, I had to take the heat for missing the details.

Every time something like this happened, I expanded my view of what it looks like to do great work. The list of things I knew to check for grew exponentially throughout my early career.

I’m guessing you have your own version of these stories, and most of them probably weren’t comfortable.

Would you agree it's because of those experiences that you see and care about the details now?

When does the learning happen?

This is where it gets tricky.

The challenge isn’t just teaching your team to care about the details. It’s when that learning happens. If you're like most leaders, your team is probably missing details:

When a deadline is imminent.
When time is already tight.
When the work is urgent.
When the same mistake has already happened more than once.

There’s almost never a clean, low-stakes moment to practice attention to detail.

Which means the learning shows up inside real work, with real consequences, when you simply don't have the time for this.

What are you actually teaching?

In those moments, if you're not careful, you can unintentionally teach:

“I don’t trust you.”
“I have to catch everything.”
“You’re not ready.”

...which is not what you're trying to teach.

The point is that the details matter. Because they matter, your team needs to learn how to:

See the details.
​Recognize why they’re important.
​Find what’s missing.
​Discern which details matter most.
​Check, recheck, and correct every missing detail.

And -- this part is often unspoken -- they need to value your time enough to do that work before it reaches you.

I’m convinced the most important pieces here are understanding why details matter and which details matter most to whoever the work is intended for. Because without that, everything feels equally important... or, not important at all.

A friend recently told me about an experience working with a rising leader on her team who had to step up after their boss was let go.
After multiple unsuccessful revisions of a presentation, she pressed the team member about the mistakes.

Her response: "Well, you know what I meant."

Clearly, the rising leader sees her boss as the audience for the presentation -- not the executive team who will ultimately see it.

And a wrong understanding of the audience and what excellent work looks like for them equals an inability to correctly discern which details matter most.

It's more complex than a few simple details.

Now, let's layer in another tough reality.

An entire generation watched their parents hustle, sacrifice time at home, and give up other priorities in the name of doing excellent work.

And now they’re asking a very honest question: “Is it worth it?”

If getting every detail right means sacrificing exercising, spending time with family and friends, going to church, taking vacations... was that the right tradeoff?

So, is it okay to get the work mostly right? Are some details just not worth the added cost?

What’s the real question?

I can see both sides of this.

I care deeply about attention to detail. When I send out a newsletter with an error, it doesn’t feel small to me. It feels like I didn’t care enough to get it right.
And I want you to know that I care about you in the way I care about those details.

And at the same time, sometimes I miss things. Sometimes I do the best I can. Sometimes something else matters more, and I choose not to send anything at all.

Recently, I worked with a rising leader who simply has too much on her plate. Though there's room for her to be more disciplined about her time, this is really a capacity problem. Perfection isn’t possible in her current reality.

Something has to give.

And this is probably true for some of your team members, too.

Questions like “What happened to attention to detail?” or “Why don’t they care?” aren't nearly as helpful as:

In other words, your team needs to understand which details matter most and why you care about them. Helping them see it is like shining a flashlight into one dark places.

Is it a details problem or a capacity problem?

If you want to raise the level of detail in your team’s work, a few shifts can make a real difference:

• Decide which details must be done right, and why.
• Be explicit about what “done well” means. Don’t assume they see what you see. Show examples. Call out specifics.
• Name the cost when these details are missed. What happens when this goes out with errors? Who does it impact?
• Create a habit of checking twice by asking: “What did you double-check before bringing this to me?” Make that part of the process.

And by all means, honestly evaluate your team's capacity. If there's too much on their plate or they're focusing on the wrong priorities, then help them create the space they need to get the right things done right.

• Are they in every meeting? Maybe they don't need to be.
• Are they doing things that could be done by someone else?
• Have you considered leveraging vendors, volunteers, partners, members, or other stakeholders in new ways?

Unfortunately, when there isn't enough capacity to do everything well, attention to detail will always lose.

How would you answer these questions?

Which details are worth it?
Where is “good enough” actually good enough?
And how are you helping your team learn the difference?
How did you learn attention to detail?
Are you giving your team the same opportunity to learn for themselves?

I’d love to hear your perspective as I continue helping rising leaders distinguish what truly matters from what’s just noise.

Reply any time. I always respond. :)

Enjoy!
Sara

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