Tiny Noticeable Things

TNTs are Tiny Noticeable Things. They are all the little things that people don't need to do, but do do.

They may be tiny, but they are highly explosive, and they create the biggest, longest-lasting and most vivid of pictures in people's minds.

They are the difference between a four- and five-star customer experience; the difference between a manager and a leader; the difference between a team that's floundering and a team that's flying. They are the difference between a great place to work and a not-so-great place. They show how much we care; they make and break relationships, and yet they cost nothing.

They could be as small as a smile, as teeny as a ‘thank you', perhaps remembering a person's first name or recalling if a customer prefers their coffee with or without sugar. Maybe a few words of encouragement or even a handwritten note of recognition to a team member. Tiny, simple things that are overlooked all too often but have the potential to set in motion seismic shifts in thinking and bring about profound change. The effect that these little engagers can have is quite phenomenal.

Their explosive power comes from the fact that they are out-of-the-blue, unexpected, surprising acts of kindness. They are those little extra steps that people take for each other that go beyond expectations. Their impact is so much so that they are able to penetrate straight through the conscious mind and gain fast-track access to the subconscious, where they detonate – triggering deep, dormant emotions.

Used effectively, they light up faces, electrify rooms and make people's days. Whether you are looking to energise and inspire your teams, put customers at the heart of everything you do, get ahead of the competition or just blow someone away – never underestimate the potent power of TNTs.

TNTs – The Difference

Before going full-time on the speaking circuit, I spent most of my career in a commercial environment trying to get the very best out of people. I was forever looking for innovative ways to engage and motivate teams of everyday people like myself to pull together and deliver extraordinary results.

As a team, we were constantly searching for opportunities to make a real difference for our customers with the services we had to offer. They were always challenging times with massive targets to meet, huge amounts of competition and recruitment firms trying to steal our best people.

Not having the deep pockets that our bigger competitors appeared to have, or for that matter any particularly unique product to sell, we somehow had to stand out in what was a ferociously competitive marketplace. To make this happen, in addition to doing all the basics consistently well, we had to continually step beyond our customers' expectations by doing all the little extra, standout things – the ‘tiny noticeable things' – far better than any of our competitors. Hence, out of necessity to deliver and exceed expectations, ‘TNTs' were born, and as a team fanatical about creating exceptional customer experiences – they soon became our secret weapon to making a difference.

For me, whether we're talking about inspirational leadership, building high-performance winning teams or delivering outstanding customer service, it's all about how we make people feel – great people make people feel great, and when it comes to making people feel great, nothing is as effective as TNTs.

These days, whether I'm delivering keynote presentations or running workshops, no matter what topics are covered or the size of organisation I am speaking to, TNTs are always the biggest and most popular takeaway with delegates. Probably because they are so easy to implement, they make an instant difference, and, being such simple things, everybody gets behind them. A regular feedback comment being: ‘I now have a name for all those little things that I've always been aware of but just didn't know what they were called before!' When listening to people in group discussions talking about their own past personal experiences, I am reminded of just how important TNT moments can be. It's fascinating to hear about how the smallest gestures, that at the time seemed relatively unimportant and of no real significance, now mean so much. It's never the big stuff that is reminisced about; it's always the briefest interactions that touch hearts, stick in minds, influence thinking and leave the greatest impressions.

TNTs Shared

During some of the sessions I run, both the most ‘popular' positive and negative TNTs that are encountered on a daily basis are discussed. As you can probably imagine, the number of negative ones, those that irritate and wind people up, always outweigh the ones that delight. The consensus of opinion being that, with all of us living in an increasingly fast-paced, automated world, and with everyone around us appearing to be in such a hurry all the time, human interaction is rapidly on the decline. Evidently, TNTs that make us smile are becoming scarcer.

In a quest to create more awareness of TNTs, encourage greater appreciation of their true value, and try and halt, if not reverse, their decline, I decided to shine some light on them by asking people to share their TNT moments in their own words. The following pages are a collection of some of those that I have received so far. They are either TNTs that people have experienced themselves or ones that they have done for others. As you will see, they come in many shapes and sizes, forms and guises, but what they all have in common is that, no matter how small they may appear or how insignificant they may sound, for somebody somewhere, they made a big difference.

All contributors have kindly given me permission to share their first-hand, personal stories with you. They are divided broadly into four categories: Customer, Team, Personal and Covid. In between these real-life experiences, I will be sharing my own thoughts as well as offering a few ideas as to how I think we can best motivate people to want to fully embrace TNTs and put them to good use.

Hopefully, this book will encourage you to share my passion for TNTs as well as inspire you to think even more about what small differences you can make each day, both in and out of the workplace. Quite possibly, random acts of kindness that give a little lift now and then to those most in need of one will become less random.