Tom Brady drops back into the pocket. Linemen tug, push, and groan, fighting to tackle or protect Brady. Tom scans the movements downfield and throws the ball to an open spot, but someone is magically there to catch it.

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Brady always fascinated me. Yes, he had an exceptional physique and physical skills, but his special talent was pattern recognition. He had an all-seeing eye that fed his brain with information about the movement in a complex environment, and he could interpret it and act on the situation. Yes, there were plays designed by the coaching staff, but the defensive team's objective was to disrupt those patterns and cause chaos. Deciphering that pattern was the quarterback's job. Successful quarterbacks, like Brady, have unusually strong pattern recognition skills.

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Successful leaders also need well-honed pattern recognition. A CEO, especially in a complex, fast-changing industry, must discern a multitude of factors about the market, economic conditions, competition, technology, people, and operations. The CEO must deal with ambiguity, conflicts, and too little or too much information, and be able to make decisions and set directions for the organization. Pattern recognition also applies to observation of the team, the people, and the executive team, sensing how they interact, discerning their unique skills, putting each in their particular assignment, and coaching them to higher ideals.

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“There are some people who look at a pile of dots and see a picture, then there are others who look at a picture and see nothing but a pile of dots.” That’s the way I described our recruiting effort when heading a strategic planning unit in an international corporate job. I was only half joking because we were searching for the people who were incredibly talented at developing realistic marketing and manufacturing strategies in our eleven-country international market environment that covered Europe, Latin America, and Asia. We were constantly scanning economic indicators from the countries and others from international organizations. In addition, our manufacturing plants had different political and cultural characteristics. In short, we needed intelligent people with excellent pattern recognition. We needed staff members who could visualize a picture from a pile of dots. We found the candidates in our country organizations, by observing candidates over a relatively long period of time. 

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Those candidates came from a variety of experiences and educational backgrounds. The best had strong liberal arts education, often had hobbies in the arts. Some had that combined with science or technology. But we found people narrowly focused on engineering or finance were seldom successful in strategy development. 

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We consultants often say leaders are made, not born. Yes, we can develop goal setting and the other elements of leadership, but can we teach pattern recognition? A person with broad perspectives in literature, art, science, culture, travel, and interpersonal relations is more likely to be prepared for pattern recognition because such a person can discern patterns and subtle movements. Such a person might be called a polymath, an expert in many different fields. Perhaps that’s as close as we can get to training for pattern recognition. In the meantime, the best we can do is observe would-be leaders to see if they can complete passes.

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