Quite an excel­lent pre­sen­ta­tion by Fab­rice Marchi­sio, Cotty Vivant Marchi­sio & Lauzeral, on “The Boil­ing Frog Phe­nom­e­non and The Impor­tance of “weak sig­nals.” Here’s a sum­mary high­light­ing the rationale:

If you put a frog in boil­ing water, the frog will jump out and save its life. But if you put a frog in cold water and slowly turn up the heat, it will not jump out.

The human brain works the same way. With smooth tran­si­tions, you remain par­a­lyzed. Psy­chol­o­gists call this sen­sory overload.

Wake up calls can­not be ordered. To do so, you need tools called weak signals.

Weak sig­nals are the credit scores of major future changes. They are the vibra­tions of future earthquakes.

The fact is, flow of infor­ma­tion makes it dif­fi­cult to react. Also, we like “rou­tine think­ing” and we don’t expect to see the seeds of change.

So, at the end of every day, take five min­utes to write down what you think are weak sig­nals. At the end of the month, take this infor­ma­tion and see if you can turn it into mean­ing­ful infor­ma­tion. If you can’t do so, you’re like the boil­ing frog.

For exam­ple, sub­tle signs pointed red flags lead­ing up to the sub­prime cri­sis. Banks were aware, but not able to pin­point the prox­im­ity of the event.

Con­clu­sion: next time you make a deci­sion, think about the boil­ing frog and take a risk, be uncon­ven­tional, and stay away from the com­fort zone.

fab­rice marchi­sio, leweb, leweb10, ignite, weak sig­nals