When a pattern repeats

It almost never begins dramatically. It begins with a deal falling through that was already secure. There was a reason, and it was a good one.

The problem is not each event, it is the series

Then another falls through. There was a reason for that one too — a different one. Then an employee leaves without a real explanation. A partner withdraws. A decision weighed for months turns out backwards the moment it is executed.

Each event, taken separately, can be explained. That is precisely the problem. As long as every single incident has its own reasonable explanation, nobody lifts their eyes to look at the whole series. And a series cannot be seen from inside it: it becomes visible when someone orders it in time and looks at it all at once.

Most people who end up presenting their case do so on the seventh occasion. On the third it would have been far simpler.

Three questions that order almost any situation

You need no one to ask them. They can be answered alone, on paper, in twenty minutes.

First: since when? Not what happened, not whose fault it was. Only since when. Almost everyone has to stop and think — and while thinking, they listen to themselves, and end up saying a sentence that starts with «actually, ever since…». That sentence is usually the real information. Everything before it was the version one tells.

Second: what changed just before? A new partner, an inheritance, a move, a separation, someone joining the company. Not to blame anyone, but to date the beginning.

Third: what repeats in the form? Not in the content. The facts differ every time; what sometimes repeats is the manner: always at the last moment, always through a third party, always just as something was about to consolidate.

What is not a pattern

This is worth saying, because not everything is one, and no one should see repetition where there is only chance.

• A bad run has a beginning and an end, and does not change terrain. A pattern jumps from the professional to the personal, or the reverse.
• A management error is corrected once its cause is corrected. If the cause is corrected and the result repeats unchanged, it was not a management error.
• A medical, financial or legal problem has its own professionals, and they must act first. Our terrain begins where theirs ends — not before.

When presenting a case makes sense

When the three questions above have answers, when the relevant professionals have already done their work, and when something, even so, remains unresolved.

And it makes no sense when there is haste. In this field haste almost always means the decision has not actually been taken — and a decision that has not been taken will not hold.

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