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)
