In Walter Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs, he cites Steve’s father, who says that Jobs as a young man growing up and working on furniture, etc., was always crafting the backs of cabinets even though they were hidden. “He loved doing things right. He even cared about the look of the parts you couldn’t see.”

Fascinating.

Leader, care about the details. For two reasons: they matter, and no one else will.

Whatever your context is – everything from overseeing the ascetics of a room or product, to what you give your kids for lunch each day (please no Lunchables, that is not food!) the little things matter gravely. Care about them.

In his book Great By Choice, Jim Collins lists three things great companies do:

1. Systematic Creativity – they are creative but focused, not erratic, or ambiguous, or artsy for art’s sake. Creativity connects to the hearts of people and makes life or products or churches connect to the affections versus just behavior one way or the other.

2. Productive Paranoia – during the good times, they don’t go on vacation, kick their feet up and ‘enjoy success’ but keep pushing. They never relent or arrive. In my context it’s the church – and we as a staff always try to talk about the fact that we never settle because there is an urgency in our mission. Every day people in our city and country are dying without Jesus. This keeps us awake at night. And we do everything we can to turn the tide.

3. Fanatic Discipline – as you grow and expand, as a company, a church, an employee, a family, whatever – the temptation will be to start doing everything under the sun. When Starbucks started selling random things and becoming about a hundred things other than coffee, Howard Schultz came back as CEO and killed most of those hundred things. He wanted it to come back to the basics and the priority of selling good cups of coffee, not coffeemakers and plastic filters, and sandwiches with bad smelling burnt cheese. It’s better to be world class at three things in your life, than mediocre at ten.

Notice all three of these things revolve around details.

Creativity. Paranoia. Discipline. Paying attention to the details makes you stand out from everyone else.