The very first small things that go wrong often tell us far more than we realise. They can pinpoint the beginning of the slow decline of a company, a neighbourhood, a town or even a country.
The other day, after a walk in Dorset, we decided to stop for coffee in a nearby locality. It was by no means a bad area. In fact, we chose it precisely because it seemed quieter and less crowded than the place next door.
Perhaps that should have been our first warning sign.
We went into what appeared to be an upmarket restaurant. When we ordered coffee, the waitress asked whether takeaway cups would be acceptable because they were apparently out of clean mugs. We agreed. Then we waited. And waited. About ten minutes later, the coffee finally arrived, and the cups were only half full.
I asked for some brown sugar. The waitress returned with a straw.
They were out of spoons.
It was almost comical, but then we noticed a customer being served the wrong meal. Curious, we looked at the restaurant’s Google reviews.
That was when the pattern became apparent.
The ratings had begun falling sharply about five months earlier. The comments told a familiar story: owners apparently turning up intoxicated, increasingly long waits for food, staff arguing with one another, customers being ignored and orders repeatedly getting wrong.
None of these things, taken individually, would necessarily destroy a restaurant. A broken coffee cup, a missing spoon, a delayed meal or an unhappy employee can happen anywhere.
But collectively they tell a different story.
They are symptoms.
What struck me was how quickly a perfectly viable business can begin to unravel once small failures become normal. Standards slip. Nobody taking responsibility. Customers become frustrated. Good employees leave. Management becomes reactive rather than proactive. The remaining staff become demoralised. More things go wrong. And eventually customers stop coming.
By the time the doors finally close, the collapse may look sudden.
But it wasn’t.
It began months or perhaps years earlier, with small things that nobody considered important enough to fix.
Ernest Hemingway captured this remarkably well when he wrote:
“Gradually and then suddenly.”
He was describing bankruptcy, but the observation applies to so much more than money.
Think about a neighbourhood. The first street lamp stops working and isn’t repaired. Then a pothole appears and remains for months. Rubbish begins accumulating around overflowing bins. Graffiti isn’t removed. A vacant property deteriorates. A once-busy shop closes and isn’t replaced. Public spaces become neglected.
None of these things means a neighbourhood is collapsing.
But they can be early indicators that something underneath the surface is no longer working as it should.
The same is true of companies and institutions. A missed deadline. A call that isn’t returned. A customer complaint that isn’t taken seriously. A manager who repeatedly behaves badly but is protected because of their position. A small deterioration in standards that everyone notices but nobody addresses.
Eventually, people stop expecting things to work.
And that may be the most dangerous stage of all.
We become accustomed to dysfunction. We explain it away. That’s just how things are now. We make excuses for poor behaviour. We lower our expectations. We tolerate what we would once have considered unacceptable.
And once a society, an organisation or a relationship begins lowering its standards, decline can become self-perpetuating.
Relationships are no different.
A friendship rarely ends because of one isolated irritation. More often, it is a succession of small disappointments: the phone call that never comes, the promise that isn’t kept, the insensitive remark that goes unchallenged, the recurring behaviour we keep excusing.
We tell ourselves it doesn’t matter.
Until it does.
Small resentments accumulate. They become a reservoir of unspoken anger. And then, one day, something apparently insignificant triggers an emotional outburst that brings years of accumulated frustration to the surface.
To an outsider, the reaction may seem disproportionate.
But the outburst isn’t really about the final incident.
It is about everything that came before it.
This is why we should pay more attention to the small things.
The first broken street lamp.
The first pothole left unrepaired.
The first customer complaint ignored.
The first promise broken.
The first time someone behaves badly and we decide it isn’t worth confronting.
These are not necessarily signs of impending collapse. But they are signals.
And signals are useful precisely because they give us a chance to act before the damage becomes irreversible.
Things rarely fall apart all at once.
First, something stops working.
Then another thing.
Then another.
We adapt. We excuse. We tolerate.
And eventually we look back and wonder how everything changed so completely.
The frightening thing about decline is that it is often almost invisible while it is happening.
The hopeful thing is that the same is true of repair.
A pothole can be fixed. A lamp can be replaced. A customer can be listened to. An apology can be made. A standard can be restored.
Sometimes the difference between decline and renewal is simply whether somebody notices the first small thing that has gone wrong, and cares enough to do something about it before its too late.
Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast
P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.
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