The Extra Mile vs. The Final Inch
We know Jesus’ analogy of the extra mile: “…if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” (Matthew 5:41, ESV) The context for this statement came from the Roman army’s practice of conscripting a (usually) Jewish citizen to carry their equipment for one mile. Legally, one mile was required. But Jesus challenged his hearers to double it up in order to demonstrate humble, grace-filled, voluntary service.
It’s an often-quoted but mostly-out-of-context verse that we use to encourage people to go above and beyond what is asked of them. (And don’t get me wrong: I’ve misrepresented it plenty of times in well-intentioned vision-casting and volunteer-rallying speeches, and written on it previously on this site, here and here.)
I say mostly-out-of-context because using “second mile” as a rallying cry is basically comparing whomever we’re going the extra mile for to a sweaty, temperamental, abusing-of-their-power Roman soldier. The extra mile worked really well when Jesus said it and with how he intended it to be applied. I’m not so sure it always applies to using a three-ring binder for a presentation when a staple would’ve done just fine.
Editor’s note: you’re coming up on the third mile in over-explaining this. Keep it moving, Skippy.
Compare the extra mile to the final inch.
Maybe in our modern-day context of serving others well, we should compare service less to the second mile and more to the final inch. Specifically, the “One-Inch Rule” popularized by Will Guidara in his incredible book Unreasonable Hospitality. He used the One-Inch Rule with the serving staff at his high-end restaurant:
Say you take a plate from the kitchen and carry it out into the dining room carefully, so that it appears exactly as the chef plated it—the sauce perfect, the tiny pluche of chervil balanced just so. Then, in your rush to your next task, you jostle the plate as you drop it off at the table. Maybe the fish tips over slightly, or the garnish slips.
When you lose focus in that last inch, the presentation is ruined.
A lot of people would say that’s not the end of the world, and maybe they’re right. But I believe that mistake is bigger than a smudge of sauce where it shouldn’t be on an otherwise pristine plate.
Every dish we served at Eleven Madison Park was the result of weeks, if not months, of recipe development and testing. The server who’d described it to the guest had painstakingly learned the description and worked hard to paint a picture for the guest, so the dish sounded irresistible. The cooks who’d made it had brought years of training and experience to the faultless preparation and plating of the protein, and the six other components on the plate represented even more hours of labor and care.
If your job was to place that dish in front of the guest, you were the last link in a long chain of people who had invested many hours of work in that dish. If, in that final inch, a zucchini flower rumbled because of your carelessness, you were letting a lot of people down—including the guest, who’d trusted you with a few hours of their life in the expectation that you would blow their minds.
Now, I’m pretty sure that neither I nor you – my otherwise-esteemed readers – have any idea what a pluche or chervil is, and whether we should eat it or stare at it. But Guidara’s point comes across. And there’s a crossover between going the extra mile and paying attention to the final inch.
In our Guest Services teams, the final inch is not just sprucing up the lobby on a Sunday morning, it’s picking off that errant piece of Scotch tape from the front door that previously held a VBS poster.
With our volunteers, the final inch is not just crafting a great plan on paper, communicating that plan clearly and often, but making sure the plan is executed to the letter.
On our staff, the final inch is not only creating a meeting agenda that is action-oriented, it’s following up with the staff member who seemed disengaged.
I fear that for all of our preparation, for all of our planning, for all of our – to use a restaurant term – plating – we can lose focus in the final inch, and ruin the presentation.
Where are you violating the one-inch rule?
Photo credit: ChatGPT
