Is there really a 'Devil in the Details' ?

Recently at an Apple store, I noticed something interesting. The power cables connecting from the floor to the display units on the table were not just loosely hanging from the power source to the device but had a design feature. After talking to one of the staff there, I learned that all the cables carried the same spiral design and the size and number of spirals in a cable were part of the store's design spec maintained for all cables in each Apple store. Apple’s legendary attention to detail is not just applied to its ubiquitous products but even to ancillary things like power cables in their stores. A high level of attention to detail has been the hallmark of most iconic masterpieces : Da Vinci worked on Mona Lisa for many years, perfecting the sfumato technique of painting giving it a look perhaps more natural than what most advanced cameras can capture today. Taj Mahal’s magnificence is not just due to its grand architecture but also because of the rich and detailed carvings throughout the interiors made with precious and semi-precious stones and beautiful  Persian calligraphy.

General perception - ‘Devil in the Details’

While attention to details differentiates the good from the great and adds a strong visual appeal to design features, when it comes to information or project details, we tend to view things differently. The idiom ‘the devil is in the details’ is often used when we talk about getting into the details - Wikipedia explains the term as ‘a catch or mysterious element hidden in the details’. This seems to convey our general point of view that there is some danger hidden in the details and getting to know them may cause more harm than good. Our perceptions of details have been built by our real-world experiences where there is a tendency to equate details with adverse events or bad news. e.g. disclaimers, unfavourable covenants of a contract and other details which tend to be put in fine print as they may be unpleasant but required to be stated for full disclosure and compliance purposes.

Details could be very valuable

Some recent corporate developments seem to challenge the notion that there could be a devil in the details – if anything, they convey the immense value of knowing the details. Google’s recent Alphabet announcement restructuring its business into different business units was very well received by investors as it would give a lot more details on the performance of each business segment. After the announcement, Google stock moved up by ~5%, adding a whopping $20B in shareholder value. Last week, there was a surprise email update from Apple’s CEO on their China business to CNBC. While Apple rarely provides any mid-quarter update for the overall business let alone for any single market, it must have felt the need to provide an update when absence of such details was causing strong negative perceptions about business prospects for Apple products in China. Apple’s update on its China business provided much needed insight and relief for investors and Apple’s stock which had seen a major decline prior to the update, changed course and went up by 10% after the email update, adding a staggering $60B+ in Apple’s market value and reversing broader market declines.

In our professional careers, we have been in many meetings and presentations where we see the broad trends and takeaways messages, the typical 30,000-feet view of things  – however, the details contributing to these tend to be buried somewhere deep in the background material or perhaps not even getting captured.  Losing this linkage between the big picture and the contributing details, could lead to significant loss of value. There could be underlying growth and declines in different product categories or markets which could be offsetting each other – the big picture may show the performance to be steady but the underlying details pointing to important trends, may get overlooked.

Need to befriend and not shun details

Just as GoogleEarth can take us from an outer-space view of earth to a street level view of our house with just a few clicks, today’s data analytics and visualization tools can take us from a  30,000-feet view to a detailed ground-level view in just a few clicks, filtering the relevant signals from large volumes of data noise and allowing contextually relevant information to be given at the level of detail desired by the end-user. This approach starts with a fundamental belief and mind-set that details can be of great value - we need to befriend them and not view with trepidation of having some hidden danger. In fact, as Google and Apple investors have seen recently, and what Da Vinci and Emperor Shah Jahan knew centuries ago, attention to details could be an asset which can generate significant value and a strong legacy.