By Andrea Caulfield Date: 10 February 1999
Authorities on the subject of pattern recognition and intuition such as Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon say that it take 10 years of purposeful work for the brain to develop a highly skilled ability to see patterns. It can be taught, but like everything, it’s easier for some people than for others.
The group of us, all involved in one way or another in understanding consumer demand and shifts in the marketplace are spending the morning with Jim, to learn what we can about anomalies and weaving. I have recently finished my MBA and am drawn to this study of what is called “inferential intelligence” because, well…it’s interesting.
John, from England has been gathering anomalies of the changing relationship between men and women. Dana from Connecticut has anomalies for the group about climate change. Mark, an America stockbroker and I both-unsuspectingly-have clipped anomalies about dogs and how they seem to be everywhere, and in expanded roles.
John goes first—He walks us through a stack of clippings from diverse sources including Newspapers, journals, magazines ant the Internet, highlighting the “firsts” and the unusual. Here are some of the observations he brought us:
People in Japan are sporting Love-beepers. Young people wear them into crowded places and the “lovegety” (as its called) sends out signals and flashes if it detects another person’s device similarly programmed for “karaoke”, “chat” or “friends”.
Girls in the most traditional US private schools are now being taught, not to wear white gloves, but to take them off and be competitive in sports, and life.
There has been an alarming rise of sexual misconduct in air planes
Birthrates in developed countries have never been so low (except in times of extreme depression or famine).
A cartoon from (the New Yorker) of two women in a living room looking at a lovely vase of roses—the caption below reads “They’re from David. He’s been so much more considerate since I shot him”
A story of a couple in Britain who want to freeze an embryo so they can have a child “when its more convenient”—the first lifestyle baby
As John walks us through the observations we all ponder what anomalies are connected and how. We talk about how the birth control pill has changed the equation for taking responsibility in the event of “accidental” pregnancy and Jim reminds us not to get caught up in the “why”, but instead to look, with fresh eyes at the specifics of the observations before us. To weave is to see connections among disparate facts, not to explain history. Bonnie, a full time Reader who has worked with Jim for years comments that "there’s no Romance, no Mystery in people’s lives”. Jim, who has listened to our discussion, breaks in with “No Romance---I like it”.
If Jim has identified a void underlying a cluster of anomalies, then we have an “inference” or an “insight” about a current reality. For now, it will remain “an incubating file” into which anomalies will be added and removed. The anomaly gathering and weaving process is an unhurried one. Good anomalies “stick to you” says Jim, so there is no point in being in a hurry. Instead, you have to just stand still.
We wind up our morning looking at climate change. Observations such as “Malaria outbreaks in New Jersey” show me the value of anomalies. While Scientists can argue and theorize about climate change, you can’t argue with the reality of new tropical-type mosquito populations in New Jersey! One person at the session, from the strategy group of a major corporation, was particularly interested since it could impact on her company’s insurance division. That’s the value in of paying attention to anomalies—they can alert you to changes coming from out of the blue.