Small things matter

I can heartily recommend the Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman whose writing appears in the weekend magazine. A recent article emphasised the importance, based on solid academic research, of 'pusuing little victories ... (That) a sense of incremental progress is vastly more important to happiness than either a grand mission or financial incentives'.  It's the sort of thing that chimes with common sense and personal experience but is often swept aside by the surge of 'mission statements' and 'targets' that bedevil the managements of both modern corporations and the public sector, aided and abetted by all shades of political opinion.  Too often managements emphasise the importance of 'seeing the big picture' but lose sight of the more important details, for example understanding the fundamental role played by 'the human factor'.  That is, in any organisation the people you work with come first, last, and always - not customers, clients, shareholders, stakeholders (whatever they are).  Get this first bit right and everything else will fall more easily into place and everyone benefits - including all of the above.  The corollary of course is also true. There might then be some truth in the old saw that if you take care of the little things, the big things often take care of themselves.  Just ask Snoopy.  (I had forgotten how much the Charles M. Schulz cartoons made me smile.)
As a sidebar, my older son was highly critical when I told him the subject of my latest blog, accusing me of 'plagiarism'.  'But,' I protested. 'I always quote my sources.' 'Still plagiarism,' he insisted.  Well not according to my 1996 edition of Chambers Dictionary it isn't.  I quote verbatim: 'to copy ideas from someone else's work and use them as if they were one's own'.  So, ha!