Attention To Detail

It was muggy on that June day in 1992 when I was thrown into a group of about 120 others in the care of the US Navy’s finest company commanders to learn the Navy’s culture and way of life. Boot camp. Boot camp is designed to shape young men and women into disciplined sailors while providing foundational training and basic skills.?

I can recall a special educational moment when we all stood at attention and received “instruction”. Our company commander held up someone's sock that had fallen on the barracks floor and eloquently explained - in a manner only a salty sailor can appreciate - how a carelessness could ultimately lead to broken equipment or even a sailor’s death.?In the event of a hull breach or firefighting scenario, a sock could clog a drain or impair mechanical equipment. Such a careless act is inexcusable. Fires happen at sea all the time - most are small, but all are taken seriously. I’ll attest to the fact that we had a few fires on my ship and the USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) is a recent, albeit extreme example.

The ultimate message throughout boot camp never changed. Attention to detail. Many pushups, sit-ups, butterfly kicks and calisthenics helped to commit this message to memory. It worked.

Recently I found myself stuck in what I call on-hold purgatory for 1 hour and 17 minutes. I guess that’s the extent of my patience because at that point I lost my faith in that AT&T call center queue and went about chasing other resources to assist with our outage.

It all could have been avoided if we had paid attention to the details. A disconnect order had caused the outage. Nothing had failed. We had relocated an office and disconnected what we thought was long-distance service. Instead, we later discovered, a toll-free number had accidentally been mislabeled as long-distance service in the inventory database. My mind flashed back to that muggy day in Great Lakes, IL. Attention to detail. It’s clear to me that the person who did the inventory audit project did not have the pleasure of “attending” my boot camp.

Did it cost lives in this case? No, but it may cost jobs. That toll-free number was a customer-facing number in which we'd take orders. It was a revenue driver. In 2020 when many companies were forced to reduce expenses on the brink of a recession, we needed to operate with efficiency and attention to detail.?