Page 55 - Future Demands Jan 2021

FUTURE DEMANDS
DAMIAN THOMPSON
GROUP MANAGING DIRECTOR – ALDERMORE
AN INSIGHT LED FUTURE
One of the saving graces of growing older (mostly not too disgracefully) is perspective, and it’s only when you look back with this new-found objectivity that the most remarkable life realisations occur.
For – when you combine the evidence of what’s been with the sanguine insight of calm thought – you not only see things as they were more clearly, but far more importantly understand why they were. This, I believe, is wisdom.
For example, while reviewing 2020’s market data to predict future trends, I’ve just this moment had such a realisation. Namely, I was unknowingly advocating for a data-led approach to life when I was a cricket-obsessed kid growing up in Barbados.
Back then I was much more Wisden over wisdom, and nothing mattered more than childhood dreams of opening the bowling for the famous West Indies team of the time. Even now, when I hear that beautiful sound of a red
leather ball swooshing past a flailing bat and clattering through wooden stumps, it takes me back to those big bumpy pitches, and bigger bumpier ambitions.
My initial memories from those school days are of playing the game through instinct alone, but dig a little deeper and it reveals a statistical approach to decision making, rooted in experience and insight.
Cricket is a game of numbers, and I was unwittingly absorbing data relentlessly. From obsessing over my own averages, to memorising the stats of the greats (the number 501 will mean a lot to many who read this), I was assessing the world through numerical results.
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