It's not JUST the Devil in the Details

The details matter. They matter on a grander scale then we can imagine. Sometimes those details matter to those who we do not expect them to matter too.

I just read a story of Steve Job’s concern over a small detail. I will let you read that story here yourself:  Steve Jobs and the Google Logo Ambulance. The story immediately brought to mind a man who worked for me as a day porter in the headquarters of a large company. His name also was Steve.

This week I followed a conversation about the frustration of finding and keeping good help. I was in the business long enough to fix that problem for good and never had to advertise as all my competitors did.

My Steve was no genius and was in fact developmentally disabled. Steve took his job very seriously. Though he was finished with work at 4pm, one night I get a call from Steve at 11pm.

Steve was bothered about a spot on a faucet that he was not able to remove in a men’s room on the second floor. He could NOT rest and called me to tell me he was working on it but it really was bothering him.



Steve cared and at 11 at night, he cared just a little too much, I remember thinking. A very small detail that he cared about more than me at that hour. For over two years, Steve was never late or called out sick. Steve cared.

During his second year with me, the company awarded the Employee of the Year to Steve. He was not the company’s employee but won that award even though he was on my payroll. My day porter became part of their organization as far as they were concerned. He was a simple man with a singular focus on his job. Steve was a star in that building and it was recognized. I had several people who worked for me like Steve but the story I read about Apple’s outgoing CEO reminded me of someone I was fortunate not just to know but have on my payroll.

Some care about the details and that is what makes them exceptional. Being exceptional can happen on many levels both very large and very small. Both Steve’s cared about details, the famous one and the one that I knew.

Sometimes those people stick out from the rest of the crowd. I made it a habit to identify who those people were in my company and I did find them. You can also if you look for them. They are out there waiting on a mission.

Postscript on Steve: This is the part that I have a hard time with. I cannot ever tell this without being shaken up and have never before written this down.

A few months after Steve won Employee of the Year he came to me and asked me for a raise. As I always did, I asked Steve why he deserved it and he told me why. I agreed he was right and asked him how much he deserved. Steve told me 25 cents, a whole quarter and then he looked at me carefully to gauge my reaction. I held out my hand to shake his and smiled, telling him I agreed with him 100 percent. It would begin this pay period and thanked him for the good job he was doing. I will never forget the look on his face. Steve was so very happy and I was too.

Next morning I get a phone call from Steve’s mother in tears. He lived with his mother because of his disability. Steve was so happy because of the raise he had earned; he celebrated that night by drinking two cans of beer, which was extremely rare. Steve drowned in the pool of his apartment complex that night.

That headquarters building where Steve worked controlled manufacturing facilities all over the world. In cubicles throughout that, building hung notes and poems about Steve from all over the world. Because Steve cared, he was both loved and terribly missed by not only those who knew him but by those who only knew him from a great distance.

Therefore, it is not JUST the Devil in the details. The details are of great concern from above also and we are surrounded with the evidence but we have to look a little harder.