One of the five questions I presented in last Sunday’s talk about Christian Leadership was the question, “How does he do in little things?” Many leaders can pull off the big events and show up for all the important moments, but what about all those ‘little things’ that make up the other 95% of their work week? This question comes from Jesus’ own teaching in Luke 16:10 Whoever can be trusted with a very little thing, can also be trusted with much, and whoever is unfaithful in a very little thing will be unfaithful in much.”
My son Stephen recently recommended that I read a book about why most (80%!) small businesses fail. So I sat in the cafe at Barnes and Noble for a while earlier this week with “The E-myth Revisited” by Michael Gerber. The following quote, from early in the book, arrested my attention. Gerber says this point is central in his motivation to write the book:
“And so the great ones [business leaders] I have known seem to possess an intuitive understanding that the only way to reach something higher is to focus their attention on the multitude of seemingly insignificant, unimportant, and boring things that make up every business. (And that make up every life, for that matter!)
These mundane and tedious little things that, when done exactly right, with the right kind of attention and intention, form in their aggregate a distinctive essence, an evanescent quality that distinguishes every great business you’ve ever done business with from its more mediocre counterparts whose owners are satisfied to simply get through the day.
Yes, the simple truth about the greatest business people I have known is that they have a genuine fascination for the truly astonishing impact little things done exactly right can have on the world.”
