A few years ago I read the book about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. The smart Stanford dropout was eventually found guilty of fraud and has to spend part of her life in jail. She was on the Fortune's list for being "The World's 19 Most Disappointing Leaders."
Holmes makes me think of a story that my son told us about an MIT upperclassman, a super smart man. He also clashed with the law for stealing the company's IP, a crime that will follow him in the long years to come.
Both stories are heartfelt when considering the many years they spent in high school working hard, striving to gain admission to prestigious institutions like MIT or Stanford, with a bright future ahead, only to be ruined at their own hands.
At this moment I think of a Chinese saying, which is not a fitting one here. Both involves the ruin and collapse of an achievement: 千里之堤，溃于蚁穴（qiān lǐ zhī dī，kuì yú yǐ xué）An embankment of a thousand-mile long, collapsed because of a tiny ant nest. In other words, A stitch in time saves nine.
The highlight message is this: sometimes something small and insignificant can have potentially disastrous consequence. Even minors can cause major damage! So, don't ignore these minors.