#1 capability of Brian

The #1 capability of the brain? Why we can learn? Hit a golf ball? Read this insight? Race a car?

The answer is: Pattern Recognition. Our brains are uniquely wired to do this one thing brilliantly. Therefore, the key to mastering anything (and making great decisions fast) relies on you feeding your brain appropriate data and then letting it do its thing -- find the patterns within the chaos!

Whoever learns faster wins! You need a certain frequency and amount of data to recognize appropriate patterns. If you only get data once a month, it takes several months for your brain to see certain trends; if you get data weekly, then it will be several weeks; and if you get and discuss data daily, your brain will see critical patterns within days. It's not any more complicated than this, which is why companies that huddle daily and track appropriate data will out-decide firms with longer learning cycles.

Gather data from customers/employees daily or weekly. This is the power of GE's Quick Market Intelligence (QMI). This is why I strongly recommend executives talk with one customer per week and have lunch with one employee. This is why Lou Gerstner, the famous CEO of IBM, required the top 240 executives of IBM to talk with five customers per week and five employees per week. These are all mechanisms for feeding key decisions makers' brains streams of data that aids in identifying trends quicker than the competition.

90% hiring success rate -- pattern recognition is also the power behind the Topgrading interview process. The structured interview process that Brad and Geoff Smart have perfected over the decades provides the kind of consistent chronological data that helps the brain rapidly establish patterns of performance