Details matter. Discipline matters. The way we show up matters.
Samuel Smiles knew that back in 1859, and he boiled it down to six little things.
The six little things
In Self-Help, Smiles lists the qualities he reckons any business runs on:
Attention, application, accuracy, method, punctuality, and despatch, are the principal qualities required for the efficient conduct of business of any sort. These, at first sight, may appear to be small matters; and yet they are of essential importance to human happiness, well-being, and usefulness. They are little things, it is true; but human life is made up of comparative trifles.
Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (1859), Chapter IX, Men of Business
Despatch is his word for getting things done and sent off. None of the six will ever trend on LinkedIn. All of them decide whether a client comes back.
A few lines later he says that where people have broken down, “neglect of little things was the rock on which they split.” Plenty of good businesses lose clients that way, one missed email at a time, without ever knowing why.
Decided on feeling, justified with logic
There are countless little things that make a massive difference. Many of them people don’t even notice, other than in their subconscious. But that gut feeling makes a lot of our decisions.
How many of your decisions are made on emotion rather than logic? My guess is most of them. Logic is then often used to justify them.
Think of the proposal that arrives on the day you said it would, the invoice with the right name on it, the DJ who’s set up and sound checked before the first guest walks in. Nobody writes those down as reasons. They just feel right, and that feeling does the deciding.
It starts with awareness
It all starts with awareness: seeing what’s going on, what’s really going on. The truth about the moment. Not better than it is, not worse than it is, just how it actually is.
Decisions about what to do next can stem from there. What are the little details you need to improve? What are the marginal gains that will make a massive difference when they compound?
Marginal gains compound
Just six tiny 10% improvements create a 67% improvement overall when they compound. That’s 1.1 × 1.1 × 1.1 × 1.1 × 1.1 x 1.1, which comes to 1.671.
You don’t need one big breakthrough. You need a handful of little things done a bit better, and then done again.
So where can you make those micro-improvements in your business right now?
