Attention to Detail Matters

Written By Roger Mitchell

Attention to detail pops up all over the place on digital transformation projects. Being able to have a keen eye to spot things that are out of place is a helpful tool.

Some start with a visual scan of the material before reading the content more closely. This helps save time in spotting potential issues, and if those are present, the content is never read.

Here are some examples that I noticed from the last week:

  • Excel worksheet was duplicated and irrelevant cells were not removed before distributing

  • Conference’s PowerPoint template has text blocks with inconsistent sizing, placement, and alignment

  • Proposals submitted to an RFP had blocks of text that were not horizontally aligned and appeared to be rushed

  • CV of a consultant had spelling errors and variations (e.g. APEX, Apex), syntactical issues, and different font faces, sizes, and colors

Each of those examples have escalating impact to me as the reader, and in comparative situations, the more effort spent on both content and layout ranks higher.

As a producer of content, I often will give myself a break between drafting and editing that aligns with how important the material is:

  • An email gets a few seconds

  • A proposal gets a few minutes

  • A conference deck gets a few hours

Here are 5 areas to start focusing on to improve your attention to detail:

  1. Spelling: this is table stakes, as it’s baked into practically every operating system, and some apps have their own implementation

  2. Fonts: spot variations in font size, color, and typeface (e.g. Helvetica)

  3. Alignment: check how text blocks, images, etc are aligned horizontally and vertically on the page, plus the spacing (or distribution) between blocks of similar content

  4. Inaccuracies: consistency in how information is represented may change, most likely indicating an oversight, not malice

  5. Irrelevance: if something stands out as being unlike other content or appears like a deviation from the theme, it’s probably not supposed to be there

TLDR: Turn a critical eye onto your work and that of others to improve how your content lands and to spot potential issues.

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    Roger Mitchell
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