Visual Intelligence: Harnessing the Power of Observation to Transform Your Professional Life, Enhance Communication Skills, and Discover Hidden Potential in Everyday Situations Paperback – Illustrated, May 9, 2017

I’m the guy who can come home from work and walk through the house and not even notice my wife bought a new piece of furniture. Heck, she could probably change the carpet and it would take me a few days to notice! I bought this book to improve my attention to detail and it does not disappoint. I have zero artistic talent so the focus on art had me skeptical the book would hold my interest at first, but it turned out I couldn’t put it down. It really made me think deeper. Loved it and very glad I purchased it.

very interesting

I liked this book so much that I bought three copies to give as gifts. It’s very well written, interesting and teaches you to observe not just look at things. I would recommend it to scientists as well as educators. I agree with 85% of what she says.First, I think she ignores the importance of intuition – when you just know something but you cannot articulate why you feel that way. It is the compilation of many thousands of experiences in your lifetime. I would recommend The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker. I think she would term intuition bias, but when you have to make a split-second decision, you use what you have. Of course if and when you have time you should try to unpack your intuitions and try to see what they are based on.Secondly, she elevates the objective facts over subjective beliefs – the good/bad of a situation. For a lawyer or a police officer that is important. The law is supposed to be objective and impartial. For a parent or teacher you cannot just give a list of isolated facts. Sometimes you have to connect the dots. You have to explain good writing or good behavior. It’s almost like those educators who say “I never want a child to feel bad.” It sounds good but when a child does something wrong (i.e. being deliberately unkind, stealing etc.) they should feel bad. It’s called developing a conscience. If you raise your children without giving them your values don’t be surprised if they pick up only the shallowest of ideas of morality from popular culture.Thirdly, another section which gave me pause is on page 206-207 “The Second R: Renaming she says, “When we reach a barrier of understanding, a simple name change can be all that’s required to overcome it. New York Times best-selling author Harvey Mackay suggests, ‘Sometimes you can get what you want by calling it by another name. Let’s say you opponent does not ‘renegotiate’ contracts. Okay. What if we call it a ‘contract extension’? Your opponent says no to severance pay? Okay, it’s a ‘consulting contract.’” As long as it’s an accurate synonym and doesn’t change the meaning, think Shakespeare. ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’” This is disingenuous. In business and in law there is what is known as the “spirit of the law” it is what is the intent of the law. This idea is purely lawyerese for finding a loophole.Finally, when she revisits renaming on page 229 and suggests calling nearly all discord a misunderstanding she’s falling into a trap. Sometimes, even often, it is a misunderstanding. However sometimes it is part of a deliberate attempt to disrupt a person’s career or to manipulate a business or legal matter. If you label everything a misunderstanding and gloss over mistakes you allow corruption to take hold. Especially in law enforcement, the courts, in fact the entire criminal justice system, you have to follow up on mistakes and make sure they don’t happen again. When mistakes begin to pile up you have to wonder if they are truly mistakes. Who is making the mistakes? Who is supervising them? What is the procedure? Labeling discord a misunderstanding is appeasement, and it only goes so far.

I saw Amy Herman speak at a law enforcement training conference and I have to admit that I may have rolled my eyes a bit when I first read the brief class description. I then recalled reading about this training program in New York City and how detectives had used it to sharpen their observation skills so I went in with an open mind hoping to learn something.This turned out to be a great presentation! I wished the program was longer at the time and that there was more material to reinforce the lessons learned. I thought, "Wouldn't it be great if there was a book?"... well now there is!People expect police officers to have super-human powers of observation. They expect them to see cues and clues that others don't. Guess what? This is generally something that is only taught briefly at police academies and is usually a skill developed over time by being on the streets. In today's world we have also lost some people skills and behavioral observation skills because of technology. Some new officers don't need to figure out through observation that someone is potentially dangerous because they can run them instantly on a computer and get their entire criminal history. The problem with how officers typically learn observation skills is that it is just undirected learning that happens on its own and at its own pace. Often, the best lessons are learned by making mistakes. When the mistakes are minor and nobody gets hurt this is not a big deal. When mistakes result in a close call or a "near miss" nobody is hurt and lessons stick quite a bit more but occasionally the failure to notice a detail or pick up on a cue can have serious and deadly consequences.Besides going out on patrol and spending years with a veteran officer or detective how can we improve visual intelligence and sharpen perception? By coming up with some directed learning techniques that anyone can practice any time. A great way to start building skills is with works of art. Amy makes the point that artists put things into their work deliberately and by analyzing and deciphering these works of art we can safely build upon our powers of observation in a very controlled and deliberate manner.I would recommend this book and this training for anyone but especially for anyone who needs to excel in the area of perception and understanding what they are looking at. This is one of many books that would be useful to police officers, security guards, soldiers and investigators. If I were to create a reading list for new and experienced officers who want to sharpen their observation, perception and interpretation skills my list would include Visual Intelligence, Blink, The Gift of Fear and Left of Bang. Visual Intelligence is a deeper dive into analyzing and interpreting visual data than the other books I mentioned and the exercises are great for anyone looking to practice the concepts that they have learned.I also think that it is useful to learn these techniques for the purposes of police report writing. Many a great street cop has been frustrated in court because they weren't able to articulate the things they saw and what those things mean. There are techniques here that can help translate street experience into something that can be understood by a lay person or judge.One complaint I saw in other reviews was that the pictures are too small. I didn't have this issue but one can either magnify the images with a magnifying glass or their cell phone camera to zoom in on details or, like in the real world, accept that you may be further away than you like and work with what you can and can't see. Either way, it makes for good exercise.It is not enough to notice details, the real skill comes in how those fine details are interpreted and in the conclusions that can be drawn. Visual Intelligence is a great place to start building or enhancing these skills and a great way to deliberately and systematically improve upon years of knowledge and experience gained on the streets.

Lawyer/Art Historian/Teacher Amy Herman’s book is important. Why? Because it can sharpen your thinking skills, and improve the quality of your decisions.How? By showing you with 70+ artworks in 11 chapters how to more objectively observe and assess visual and other sensory information, and how to precisely communicate about it. Then, how to make better decisions using this more objective information, while factoring in both what is unknown and what you wish you knew about a situation.Ms. Herman’s book will enhance the performance of high school, college and graduate school students. In my view, it should be required reading. I say this as an engineer, businessman, and graduate in art and aesthetics. It is also very useful to professionals who depend especially on their visual skills to make decisions – often in a split second involving life and death.I have also read some of the criticisms of the book. For instance, yes, the pictures are small. But, they are large enough to make the needed points. And, if necessary, one can easily reference a larger image of a cited artwork on the internet.Again, I highly recommend Visual Intelligence. There is a lot of value for the dollar in this book.