This past weekend I was chatting with Kathy about this blog, and I was reminded of something that happened a few years ago to an article I was working on for Leader to Leader magazine. One of the things I love about working with the magazine is that I get to meet some very interesting and influential top executives. When it comes to cold-calling a CxO, I'm fearless -- no matter how big the company or how big the name. So I was particularly proud when I cold-called FedEx Express and got president and CEO David Bronczek to agree to do an article with me. For the associate editor of a business magazine, it just doesn't get much better than that. But as I soon was to learn, sometimes it's the small stuff that counts.

It took us a few weeks to get the article together and then to get my editor to sign off on it. Finally, we had a draft that everyone was happy with. The last thing we needed to do was to send the draft to David for his final review and approval. However, a funny thing happened on the way to David's inbox. Everything came together at the last minute, so the draft had to be overnighted to David in Memphis, Tennessee. Unfortunately, someone in the mail room chose to overnight the draft via UPS, not FedEx. This might have seemed like a very small detail -- certainly of no consequence to anyone. Well let me tell you that this small detail turned out to be very big indeed. The next thing I knew I got a call that David was no longer interested having the article appear in Leader to Leader, in short, it was dead on arrival -- with no chance of resuscitation. Someone at FedEx was not happy that we overnighted the article to their president and CEO by way of their arch rival, UPS, and I couldn't blame them.

So the magazine was left with a 3,000-word hole to fill, and I was left with a big headache -- and no small amount of wounded pride. But I did learn a lesson that I've carried with me ever since: Sometimes it's the small stuff that counts.