Eye for Detail: what is it? and how important in your life?

 

"If you have an eye for detail or a fine/good/keen eye for detail, you are good at noticing small but important things that other people might not notice."

some illustrative Examples

• Preparation : preparation such a mechanic who carefully lays out their tools before beginning a repair
• Planning : planning a task before you begin such as creating a checklist for maintenance procedure
• Design : designing things before you create them such as a software developer who develops a software design before they write any code.
• Practice : practicing a task before you begin. for example, rehearsing a speech as opposed to winging it
• Communication : paying careful attention to what you say or write to convey your ideas with color and conviction and minimize the chance of being misunderstood.
• Listening : listening with intent to understand, including reading the emotion and body language of the speaker.
• Diligence : the level of care that you apply to a task. for example, a pilot who intensely concentrates when they land an aircraft such that they are immune to distraction
• Accuracy : the degree of accuracy that you include in your work such as a news article that states that Antarctic ice sheets lost "2,720 ± 1,390 billion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017" as opposed to "Antartica is quickly melting"
• Risk : identifying, analyzing and quantifying risk as opposed to making broad and general statements such as "this is rizky" or "this is a bad idea that will fail."
• Refinement : working to improve something towards a state of perfection. for example, a designer who views a mobile device as a work of art that should instantly spark passion in the customer.

Another Examples of crisis due to lack of “eye for detail”:

1. Sapporo Breweries Ltd, Japan’s largest breweries, has apologized after it was forced to cancel the launch on 12 Jan 2021 of a limited-edition beer Kaitakushi Beer Tailored due to a spelling mistake. It was discovered that the word “lager” incorporated into a scroll on the front of the can had been misspelled “lagar”.
2. Australia printed 46 million new A$50 banknotes in 2018. They all contain an embarrassing typographical error that was overlooked by the country’s central bank before they were printed and circulated: the word “responsibility” was misspelt as “responsibilty” three times.
3. In 2015, Swedish clothing retailer H&M pulled a range of T-shirts that bore the quote: “‘Genious is one percent inspiration & ninety nine percent perspiration.”
4. In 2018, British online fashion retailer ASOS acknowledged it had printed some 17,000 bags with a phrase that read, “discover fashion onilne”.

Why is Eye for Detail important?

• Professionalism.
• Sloppiness is an unjust indicator of quality of work.
• Errors raise question about the integrity of the entire document.
• If I can’t trust you with the small things, how do I trust you with bigger roles?
• Productivity: do it right the first time.