为了明白不同的点在一段时期内的相互关系，你必须搜集、分析和识别不同类型的信息，而这并不容易。例如，设想有一天发生了8个事件结果，有的好，有的坏。我们把这一天的情况画下来，每种事件类型由一个字母表示，每个结果的好坏由其高度表示。 为了综合分析这一天，你必须根据类型（以字母代表）和质量（从低到高，越高越好）来将结果分类，这将需要对每一类总结出大体的评估。（为了让这个例子更具体，可以设想你在经营一家冰激凌店，W代表销售情况，X代表客户体验评分，Y代表媒体报道和评价，Z代表员工积极性，等等。）请记住我们的例子是个相对简单的例子：一天只发生了8个事件。在第一张图中你能看到，这一天的销售很棒（因为两个W都在顶部），但客户体验不好（见两个X）。你可以想想原因是什么，比如一群人到来，所以销售很多，但也造成排长队。 善于这样找出事物规律的人可谓凤毛麟角，但就像大多数能力一样，综合分析形势变化的能力也不完全是天生的，就算不擅长，你也可以通过练习来提高这种能力。 To see how the dots connect through time you must collect, analyze, and sort different types of information, which isn’t easy. For example, let’s imagine a day in which eight outcomes occur. Some are good, some bad. Let’s illustrate this day as shown, with each type of event represented by a letter and the quality of the outcome represented by its height.In order to see the day this way, you must categorize outcomes by type (signified by letters) and quality (the higher up the graph, the better), which will require synthesizing a by-and-large assessment of each. (To make the example more concrete, imagine you’re running an ice cream shop and the W’s represent sales, the X’s represent customer experience ratings, the Y’s represent press and reviews, the Z’s represent staff engagement, etc.) Keep in mind that our example is a relatively simple one: just eight occurrences over one day. From the first chart, you can see that it was a great day for sales in the first column (because the W’s are at the top) and a bad day for customer experience (the X’s). You might conjecture why—maybe a crowd generated sales but produced long lines.People who are good at pulling out such patterns of events are rare and essential, but as with most abilities, synthesizing through time is only partially innate; even if you’re not good at it, you can get better through practice.
