Not everything we set out to accomplish happens exactly as we planned. Take the cake in this picture. I baked and iced this cake for my son’s dinosaur-themed birthday party. This is NOT how I originally pictured this cake. However, this was the cake that was served to all the party guests and the cake received phenomenal reviews from the person that mattered most, the birthday boy. You see, I could have spent hours working at perfecting the icing or adding details, but it would have forced me to sacrifice other things like preparing the piñata or wrapping gifts.
Sometimes in our lives and our businesses we have to say “Thats good enough!” Prioritization is a double edged sword and we need to wield it very thoughtfully.
In our businesses we often obsess of the the small things, the details that continually take our attention away from the larger goals. It is easy to focus on the small nuances an work at perfecting them. These are things that we can see immediate results on. The problem is that these small things steal our time and attention away from the large things we are trying to accomplish. If we spend all our time on the small things we can often lose sight of the things that matter.
Don’t allow your organization to get lost in the details. It is the accomplishments that culminate in success.