The ‘Little Things’ that Matter

I got lucky. But that’s for another post.

What I will say is this — I have a wife who balances all my little idiosyncrasies with a patience I have never quite deserved. I tend to get far too absorbed in the bigger picture. The sweeping vision. The grand arc. Which means, almost inevitably, the little things slip past me entirely.

Roons doesn’t miss them. Ever.

Roons is Rowena — my wife of 25 years, called Roons by me, and Nuts by her cousins. (Natasha, shortened to Tash, shortened further to Nuts — don’t ask.) She will, almost always, catch exactly what I’ve walked straight past. The detail. The nuance. The thing that needed noticing. That matters, she adds, every time. And she is, almost always, right.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand after years of watching her, and years of working with people and organisations: we are not logical creatures. Not really. I’ll go further — I’d argue we are never purely logical. Every decision we make, however rational it appears on the surface, has some emotion attached to it. Somewhere underneath the spreadsheet, the business case, the carefully constructed argument, there is a feeling driving it.

This is precisely why the little things matter as much as they do.

Because people feel the little things, often before they can articulate them. The small gesture. The thoughtful touch. The thing that didn’t have to happen, but did. These are what get noticed. These are what get remembered.

The little box the eclairs or doughnuts come in — the one that didn’t need to be that nice, but is — says something. It says someone thought about it. It says someone cared enough to go slightly beyond what was required. And people feel that, even if they never say so out loud.

We underestimate this constantly in leadership. We invest in the big interventions — the strategy days, the restructures, the grand announcements — and forget that the culture of an organisation is built, quietly and persistently, in the small moments. The hallway conversation that didn’t have to happen. The handwritten note. The remembered birthday. The manager who noticed you looked off today and asked if you were alright.

None of these are in any leadership manual. All of them matter enormously.

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So, what are the lessons here?

• People are emotional. Work with it, not against it. Every decision your team makes — however it is dressed up in data and rationale — has emotion in the mix. The sooner you accept this, the better a leader you become.
• The little things are not little. They are often the biggest things. A gesture of care, however small, lands differently than any policy document ever will.
• Balance your team. I need a Roons in every room I work in. Someone who sees what I miss. If everyone on your team thinks the way you do, you don’t have a team — you have an echo chamber.
• Notice people. Not their output. Not their KPIs. Them. How they show up. What they don’t say. Whether they seem alright today. This costs nothing and means everything.
• The box matters. Presentation, care, and attention to detail are not superficial — they are signals. They tell people whether they are worth the effort. Make sure your answer is always yes.

Everything teaches. Not everyone learns. Sometimes the lesson is in a little box of doughnuts.