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I believe that an essential skill of a great strategic thinker, and for that matter a great leader, is… Pattern Recognition.
Early in my career I became an almost fanatical reader of business books, working through 100 – 120 every year, and soon realized that there was a massive amount of redundancy between most books on any given business topic.
But far from being frustrated by the redundancy, I instead began to see “patterns” of key ideas that all of these incredibly bright authors seemed to be focused on.
For example, a few years ago I read 21 books on “business execution” to prepare for a special client project. After more than 4,500 pages on the same topic it became exceedingly obvious that there was a pattern of just nine specific steps that every one of the
Armed with an understanding of this power pattern, I felt comfortable that I had a good handle on the key things I needed to build into my program in order to help my client improve their execution effectiveness.
It is this same sort of pattern recognition that allows a chess Grand Master to “see down board, “ a star quarterback to “read” the defense, or an experienced surgeon to make life or death decisions in the operating room – they see the pattern. It is also what allows a great strategic leader to “see” patterns in the market place, competition, consumer behavior and within their own business systems.
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Has seeing patterns helped you think and lead better?
How do you see patterns?