It’s one thing to say “Pay attention to the details”, it’s quite another thing to know how to pay attention to the details. Like everything else in life, there are right ways to do this and wrong ways. Paying attention to the details is a learned skill. We can say some people are more detail oriented than others. This is partially due to their nature, but mostly due to their training. They have learned to be detail oriented. You can learn this skill too!
Planning and processes have a great deal to do with successful operations. To go into a task without a plan or without a process is going in to the task by just winging it. Winging it and seeing what happens is not the best way to a good outcome. It may work out. It might turn out alright. But chances are you will not be able to perform what you just did repeatedly with success.
To have a consistent outcome, you need to have a process for what you are doing. In your process, the more precise you make your plan, the more detail is designed in, the more success you will have.
Imagine, if you will, a professional poker player. Yes, even they have a process, a plan with details before they go into competition. They do if they are the best, that is. First of all, they have to know the game. I mean really know it. They will have learned ALL the rules. They will have learned what the rules mean and what they don’t mean. The player will have studied other successful players. They will want to learn the things others have done, (and not done), that have made them successful. Great poker players will study human personality. They will know behavior patterns, facial and body expressions, and reactions. Professionals will have studied their competition. They will know everything about how their competition plays. With all this information and more, the professional poker player will carefully work out a process for how they play their game.
That’s not the end though. Once the process in placed in motion and used, the player monitors what works and what doesn’t work. He/she then makes corrections to the process. Adjustments are made based on the ever constant stream of new information. They continue to study and work out their game plan.
After all, how can you know what works and what doesn’t work if you don’t know what you did? If it worked one time does that make it good? If it failed one time does that make it bad? How do you evaluate what you are doing if there is no foundation (process) on which to build?
Details built into process and plans separate the great from the ordinary. Regardless of whether you are a professional poker player, throw darts, perform brain surgery, are a trial lawyer, run the 100 yard dash, are raising children, building a marriage or anything else for that matter. Plan your work. Work your plan. Adjust your plan. Repeat!