The Clifton Review
The Clifton Review is a tri-weekly column that examines the question of the Clifton project along with the evolution of the war between two billionaires. We covered the start of this war with articles describing the battle over easement rights, the mysterious burning of a home, the blocks to rebuilding, and countless questionable court filings.
The 2018 series salutes fashion mogul Peter Nygard’s Golden Jubilee detailing his rags to riches story and incredible business success over these past fifty years. The Clifton Review will take an inside look at how he did it.
Importance of ‘Uncompromising Attention to Details’
By P.J. Malone
There is no magic formula to create high levels of success. Yet, if you study those who have achieved remarkable levels of success, like fashion mogul Peter Nygard, you can clearly see the elements that made their success even inevitable.
One of the challenges we face, especially in the workplace, is the lack of attention to details. You’ll even hear people refer to themselves as a ‘forest’ kind of person or as a ‘trees’ kind of person—meaning that they are someone who focuses on the big picture or someone who focuses on details, respectively.
While a big-picture focus is important for strategic thinking, effectively executing strategy definitely requires ‘trees’ thinking.
In studying what Nygard did to create the level of success he’s had in his business, you can’t help but realize that it is obvious based on the way he worked.
Peter Nygard has a reputation for paying uncompromising attention to details. It is said that he took two years to develop his revolutionary SLIMs pants, that he spent one week with fourteen-hour days just designing the waist of the pant.
He is said to put special focus on fabrics making sure they have the right feel so that it is soft to the touch, has the right comfort level so that it is not restricting, has the right stretch so that it can shape a woman’s body, and has the right components to ensure that it doesn’t stain, and most importantly for lots of women, that it is easy to wash and wear.
In other words, Peter Nygard doesn’t leave anything to chance. The SLIMS pant must do everything he wants it to do. Since that wouldn’t occur by happenstance, he pays attention to every detail to achieve his very specific goals.
Many successful people reflect this trait of always focusing on the details.
Someone once described a lawyer they knew as having never lost a case. The key to his success was that he delved very deeply into all of the details of his case.
Anybody familiar with the television show “House” would recognize this trait in Dr. House as well. The television show is about a doctor who is always referred the medical cases that no other doctors can diagnose. No matter how complicated and baffling the illness, Dr. House would always figure out what was wrong and how to fix it, even if it takes a few tries.
How does he do it? Dr. House pays attention to the most minute of details and uses them to guide his thinking.
Paying attention to detail for most of us will not show up in the form of designing a perfect pant or solving a legal case or diagnosing a medical problem. We don’t have to be in these professions to benefit from this type of focus.
Being detail oriented shows up in every part of your life. It allows for less errors, less confusion, and prevents the loss of credibility—like what happens when an individual sends out an email or correspondence with errors because they didn’t review their work.
Paying attention to the details is an intangible that is not likely to show up in the expert’s success formula. However, for Peter Nygard, it has created multi-million-dollar success.
