Sourcing Patterns: The Longer the Gaze, the Greater the Familiarity
Russ Moon's picture
Submitted by Russ Moon on Thu, 04/22/2010 - 9:22am

Have you ever noticed that the longer you look at something the more familiar it becomes? You notice all the textures, nooks, crannies, the uniqueness of an object, the detail.

I thought about a trip I made with my wife to attend a conference with her in Philadelphia during the World Series last year.

We visited the art gallery and I had my pleasant fill of the van Goghs, Renoirs and Monets. I noticed people just gazing at the pictures and I guess being somewhat driven at times...it made me think they were pausing too long to look. Then I thought "Maybe I should be the one stopping and looking to see what is really there at a deeper level." So I did, and noticed all the details on these wonderful expressionistic pieces of Art.

What on Earth does this have to do with Sourcing? Everything

I had the opportunity to revisit from a fundamental sense Boolean Logic and several of the major search engines (insert your favorites here). Being up to my eyeballs floating in Boolean, dissecting these search engines and then putting it back together again I had a personal illumination.

Boolean Logic and Sourcing involves sequences or "patterns" as Shally likes to refer to them AND my take away was that once I understood more fully the sequence then that opened up doors previously closed.

Think of changing the toner in your printer.

A. Normally you open the printer to expose the carriage with the toner cartridge.

B. You need some Black Toner so you pop out the empty cartridge and insert a full one.

Pull one out - Put something back in.

Okay at this point I realize the pattern is the same, its content within the pattern that is changing. Modular. Replaceable.

Somehow at that point what was once something I "knew" went about 1,000 feet deeper.

Very nice when that happens, think more of that is around the corner.

Here's the pattern, just watch the sequence and how the base pattern is similar.

(Do | RE | Mi)

(1 | 2 | 3)

(Blue OR Red OR Yellow)

("compensation manager" OR "Compensation analyst" OR "Compensation analyst II")

(company1 OR company2 OR company 3)

(pdf OR doc OR rtf OR xls OR ppt)

(resume OR vitae OR "curriculum vitae" OR cv)