A recent news report caught my attention. According to a CAG report, eight new IITs set up in 2008-09 have fewer than 33% of seats filled between 2014 and 2019. This was the period when “Centres of Excellence” such as the IITs and the AIIMS proliferated across the country. Excellence, it appears, is available for the taking, but there are no takers. And yet, over 20 lakh candidates desperately vie for admission to these institutions every year. So, what could have gone wrong?
The great public institutions of India such as the BARC or the ISRO were not built overnight, but nurtured by leaders with prescient, expansive visions, and an eye for detail. Nothing was too small or unimportant in their quest for perfection. In my first job, the CEO of the company was known to place test calls to the switchboard to check if the telephone operators were prompt and polite, because he considered client “service” to begin from the initial call itself. He even announced spot incentives every month for the exemplary performers, to reinforce the importance of this job which might otherwise get relegated as a “routine” job.
I recall a conversation with a fellow management trainee a few months into my first job. As I explained a work-related process that was not as straightforward as it seemed, he stopped me short and slapping me on the shoulder, exclaimed, “You are a very details person, man! You need to see the ‘big picture’ if you want to rise up in the hierarchy.” The look on his face was a mixture of horror and concern, as one might have if one had to inform a close friend of imminent death.
I remember being very awed by this well-intentioned revelation and suitably crushed with my limitation. Over the years, this intellectual limitation of mine showed no signs of waning but I continued to make progress. I wondered then, not without considerable relief, if my problem was not as much with an inability to see the big picture as with an inability to ignore the details. Slipshod workmanship, just to be able to claim accomplishment of some larger goal, is intellectual dishonesty. Whether one believes that the “devil is in the detail” or “God is in the detail”, the point is clear — like in an Impressionist painting, the details make the big picture.
However, attention to detail is no more a virtue, it seems. It is considered unimportant, and even carries adverse status connotations. Getting the details right is a “menial” task fit only for the lowest rungs while looking at the “big picture” is a sign of having arrived. In a society that has already devalued manual work in its preference for cerebral pursuits, this inattention to detail can only be an invitation to disaster.
Excellence is not a happy accident; it can only be the result of conscious and consistent effort. Executives and workers must be trained and educated on the importance of getting the smallest detail right; supervisors must be incentivised for training the people working under them to maintain high standards, not glossing over shoddy work for fear of being labelled as “difficult” taskmasters. And senior managers should avoid being blinded by their own brilliance and realise that attention to detail can only be instilled by personal example. We have all heard well-worn anecdotes about famous personalities and their attention to detail precisely because this is an uncommon trait and an important facet of their greatness; a reflection of a time when everybody seemed to be looking for perfection.
“You are missing the woods for the trees” may be a brutally effective put-down to send a rival careening down the corporate ladder, but this “big picture” vision may be more myopic than imagined. No trees, no woods. Even Macbeth wouldn’t disagree!
Prophesied to remain unvanquished till “great Birnam Woods came to high Dunsinane Hill” where his castle was situated, Macbeth thought he was safe, as forests are not expected to walk around. Quite oblivious of this prophecy, his adversary, Malcolm, in a curious turn of events, asked his soldiers to camouflage themselves by carrying leafy boughs from the woods. As the troops moved up the hill, it seemed to Macbeth the “woods” were indeed moving up and the prophecy was coming true! Predictably, he ended up getting slaughtered on the hills.
Missing the trees for the woods can be just as bad as missing the woods for the trees. Because the trees are the woods.
