Attention to Detail

Catch the typo and the edge case before they become an incident or a dumb customer email.

Key Concept

• Attention to detail catches the typo, edge case, and loose end before they become incidents.
• Level 1: Like when you check your shoelaces before running - one loose tie trips you later.
• Level 2: A baker counts eggs twice before the oven - catching the typo on the order slip beats apologizing after the cake ships.
• Level 3: Attention to detail catches typos, edge cases, and loose ends before they become incidents - prevention beats fixing customer-facing messes.
• Level 4: Read the quote line-by-line against your walk-through notes before you approve - trust the second read, not the PDF looking right.
• Level 5: Small misses compound like production bugs - pairs with Rollback Principle on the fix side; the cost of one skipped check rises once it is customer-facing.
• The second look before shipping is cheaper than the fix after it is customer-facing.
• Small misses compound into incidents when nobody catches them early.

Examples

• We almost threw the inbounds pass on the wrong side of the line because two hash marks looked identical - the second read of the court map caught it.
• The contractor's quote had two rooms swapped in the floor plan - I caught it comparing the invoice line-by-line against the walk-through notes, not by trusting the PDF looked right.

Note Relationships