I have written before about the skill of having pattern
recognition. I more and more think that
this “silent skill”, that is usually deftly put to work without fanfare or
hubris, may be one of the most powerful business skills that one can have. What do I mean? Well, if you have the skill of being able to
zoom out enough to recognize patterns of a business, then you should be able to
zoom in on almost any business situation and have a pretty good idea of what
needs to happen to grow or fix the business. Sure, every industry and company
has their idiosyncrasies and unique attributes, but when it comes down to the
basics they really do start to look familiar.
It’s kind of like using some sort of online city map. If you put in the address and it zooms you
right down to street level, you don’t really have a clue as to where this
address is in relation to anything else. You don’t know if it close to downtown
or on the other side of town. You don’t
even know that moment if there is a highway anywhere close. But, when you start to zoom out and put the
address in relation to the rest of the city you see the thoroughfares, etc. and you begin
to feel confident in your ability to navigate successfully. I would go as far
to say that most of us now have had enough experience with online maps that if
we start zoomed all the way out that it doesn’t take us very long for our
own pattern recognition to take over and we know, almost like instinctively, where
there is a downtown area. We have learned
the patterns of city and highways and how we travel through them. The same can be said for business patterns.
If we spend as much time zoomed out to learn and recognize patterns as we do
zoomed in fixing the specific problem without context, then we can develop a
silent but very critical skill for success.
God’s Word is filled with life patterns for us to
recognize and modify our lives for or against the pattern. Read the Old
Testament and see the patterns of blessing, riches, power, defiance, defeat, and punishment
leading to death. See the New Testament
and learn the patterns of imperfect men surrendering, following, believing,
overcoming, and sacrificing. And, of
course see the pattern of Jesus who gave, forgave, loved, sacrificed and
delivered. Let’s zoom out today a bit and see if we can put our life pattern
against the patterns that we know we should be following. What is it that we need to do to reinvigorate
our work to bring glory to God?
Recognizing the pattern is the first step in being able to change and
influence one that is different.
Reference: 2 Timothy 1:13 (New Living Translation)
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