When a pattern repeats: how to recognise it
A repeating pattern shows in the series, not in any single event. Deals fall through at the final hurdle, key people leave, carefully weighed decisions backfire, and each has a reasonable explanation of its own. To see the pattern, put the events in date order in a single document, establish when the series began and what changed just before, and compare their form rather than their content. If the series still stands after that, and the relevant professionals have done their work, a private consultation can make sense, alongside them and never in their place.
In brief
- Each event in a series usually has a reasonable explanation of its own, and that is exactly why nobody looks at the series as a whole.
- A series is hard to see from the inside; it emerges when the events are put in date order and read in one sitting.
- When something repeats, it is rarely the content and usually the form: the moment, the route or the stage at which things go wrong.
- A bad run, a management mistake or a market cycle is not a pattern, and anything legal, financial or medical belongs first with the relevant professional.
- A written chronology is the most useful tool you have, whether it confirms a series or rules one out.
In this article
- The problem is not each event, but the series
- Why is a series so hard to see from the inside?
- How do you work out when it all began?
- What repeats is the form
- What you can prepare: a chronology
- What is not a pattern
- What can you ask your lawyer and your advisers?
- When does a private consultation make sense?
- Frequently asked questions
The problem is not each event, but the series
It almost never begins dramatically. It begins when a deal that was as good as done falls through. There is a reason, and a good one: the bank has tightened its lending criteria, the buyer has run into difficulties, the timing is wrong.
Then another deal falls through, for a different reason. Then a senior executive resigns. A partner withdraws. A decision weighed for months backfires the moment it is carried out. The events arrive one at a time, each with its own urgency and its own explanation.
That is precisely the problem. As long as every incident has a reasonable explanation, nobody steps back to look at the series as a whole, because there seems to be nothing to look at: everything has been explained.
The explanations are usually true, too. The bank really has tightened its criteria; the buyer really is in difficulty. The series contradicts none of these explanations. It sits at a different level: explaining each event and explaining why the events accumulate are two different questions, and almost everyone answers only the first.
Two events do not make a series. What makes a series is repetition across circumstances that have nothing to do with one another: different people, different sums, a different year, a different area of life. When everything changes except one thing, that one thing deserves attention.
Why is a series so hard to see from the inside?
From the inside, every event demands an immediate response. There is a contract to renegotiate, a post to fill, a bank or a team to reassure, and whoever is living through it is taken up with that, while the whole picture waits. That is only natural: no company stops to examine itself, and no family does either.
Closing each episode with an explanation is also the normal way to carry on. Anyone running a business has to file one matter away to deal with the next, and files it with the best explanation available. The drawback is that once a matter has been filed, nobody looks at it again. Every folder is neatly closed, and none is ever opened beside another.
Then there is the division of labour. Each event ends up with someone different: the lawyer has the contract that was never signed, the accountant the year’s figures, the board the executive’s departure, the family the mood you bring home in the evening. Each of them sees their part, and sees it well. The only person holding every piece is the one living through it, who is also the one least able to stand back. It is the old problem of not seeing the wood for the trees, and it catches out the sharpest minds as readily as anyone.
Time does the rest. Months pass between one event and the next, and memory sorts by intensity rather than by date: the latest episode always seems the most important, while the earlier ones fade or are rewritten (“that was different”). That is why a series is recognised on paper, almost never in your head.
Rank adds its own isolation. Beyond a certain point, nobody hears the whole story: the board knows one part, the family another. Having no one to talk to means carrying a story that has never been told from beginning to end, and so has never been examined from beginning to end either.
Any busy person sees a series late. Seeing it sooner takes only a different habit: writing things down, with dates.
How do you work out when it all began?
Three questions bring order to almost any situation, and you need nobody else to put them to you. You can answer them alone, on paper, without hurrying. The first two place the series in time; the third is for comparison.
First: since when? Not what happened, not why. Only since when. Almost everyone has to stop and think, and while thinking they hear themselves arrive at a sentence that begins “actually, ever since…”. That sentence is usually the real information; everything before it was the version you tell other people.
The first date that comes to mind usually belongs to the most recent or the most striking event, rarely to the first. It is worth going back one step at a time, asking whether there was anything similar before, until the answer is no. That is where the beginning lies, even if it is not the episode that made the most noise.
Second: what changed just before? An inheritance, a move, new premises, a change in the shareholding, a sale, a separation. The only purpose is to date the beginning. A change that precedes the series does not explain it on its own, but it anchors it in time, and an anchored series reads differently.
The change is not always external or visible. Sometimes it is a decision of your own: taking over the business from a parent, joining another company’s board, buying a property, accepting public office. Sometimes it is something that came to an end: a routine, a place, a habit that had always been there. That goes on the sheet too, without judgement.
These questions resemble the three questions before deciding that we suggest elsewhere, and that is no coincidence: asking about origins helps with a decision as much as with a series. The difference lies in the third question, which here concerns form.
What repeats is the form
Third: what repeats in form? The events differ every time: a sale, an appointment, a lease, an investment. What sometimes repeats is the manner: always at the last moment, always by some indirect route, always just as something was about to take hold.
The form may be a matter of timing, such as the week before signing or the days after an announcement. It may be the route by which the setback arrives: financing that stalls at the credit committee, a permit that is delayed, a document missing when there is no room for manoeuvre left, a commitment withdrawn. It may be the stage, the point where a plan is put into practice. Or it may be a move from one area of life to another, when a professional setback is followed by a personal one, or vice versa.
A simple exercise brings the form into view. Write each event as a single sentence, then strike out the names and the amounts. “A sale collapses in the final week.” “A key person leaves shortly after a promotion.” “An approved investment stalls at the signing stage.” What remains once the content is removed is the form, and forms can be compared.
If no common form appears, there is probably no series, and that is worth knowing too. Being close together in time is not enough to make one.
Nor should the resemblance be forced. A form that only appears when you stretch the words is no form at all. If it takes three adjectives to make two events look alike, they are most likely not alike.
What you can prepare: a chronology
The most useful tool is also the simplest: a chronology. One or two sheets, one line per event, in date order; nothing more elaborate is needed. It serves you first, it may later serve your advisers, and if you ever decide to consult us, it is the best starting point there is.
A plain table is enough. Each line can hold five things:
- the date, at least the month and year;
- what happened, in one neutral sentence without adjectives;
- the explanation given at the time, and who gave it;
- what had changed just before, if anything had;
- a question mark where the date or the event is uncertain.
Your company, your family, your property and your private life all belong on the same sheet. Most people keep them apart, business worries at the office and family matters at home, and that very separation hides a move from one area to another. A pattern that crosses between areas of life only becomes visible when those areas share a page.
Write down facts, not interpretations. “The deal fell through the day before completion” is a fact; “everything always goes wrong for me” is an interpretation. Interpretations have their place, in the margin or on a separate sheet, clearly apart, because they are exactly what the chronology is there to test.
Read it in one sitting, and not on the day you wrote it. Read it as if it belonged to a stranger, to a company you do not know, to a family that is not yours: that is as close as you can come, alone, to looking at it from outside. Note what strikes you on the first reading, before you start explaining things away.
This document holds, in a few lines, what you may never have told anyone. Keep it on paper or somewhere only you can access, never in the company’s shared folders. And before you show it to anyone, ask who else will read it. You are entitled to ask that of any professional, ourselves included, which is why we set out in writing who will know about your case.
What is not a pattern
Not every run of events is a pattern, and no one should see repetition where there is only chance. A careful chronology can also rule a series out, which is just as useful as confirming one.
- A bad run comes to an end of its own accord and stays in one area of life. A pattern can move from the professional to the personal, or the other way round, and it continues after the circumstances have changed.
- A management mistake disappears once its cause is corrected. If the cause has been corrected and the same result comes back unchanged, it was probably not only a management mistake.
- A market or sector cycle affects a whole sector at roughly the same time. If your competitors are going through the same thing, what you are seeing is the market.
- A series built after the fact rests on rearranged memories. Anyone who starts looking for repetitions will find some, which is why the chronology holds only dates and verifiable events.
- A medical, financial or legal problem has its own professionals, and they must act first. We begin where they leave off, not before.
If the series falls apart under this review, the chronology has done its job, and the question is closed. If it holds, the next step is still not ours: it belongs to your professionals.
What can you ask your lawyer and your advisers?
The order is always the same. If the series has a legal, financial or medical side, the relevant professional acts first: the lawyer for contracts, disputes and failed deals; the accountant or tax adviser for the figures; the notary for inheritances and property, in countries where notaries hold that role; and the doctor for anything medical, before anyone else. That order is the right one, and we keep to it without exception.
As a rule, your professionals see one event rather than the series, because they are consulted about one event. You can change that. Show them the chronology instead of the latest episode, and ask them to look at the whole period. A few questions work with any of them: whether they see anything in common between the deals on the list, whether in their experience such a matter usually stalls at that stage, whether anything in the structure, the contracts or the accounts keeps coming back.
If a professional finds a common cause, such as a clause, a financing structure or a particular way of negotiating, the answer lies in their field, and you work on it with them. Some series that look inexplicable have a technical cause nobody went looking for, simply because nobody had seen the series.
Their part ends when each professional, having looked at the whole series, confirms that their piece was sound: the contract was properly drafted, the figures added up, the structure was appropriate. Everyone is right on their own terms, and yet something remains open. We describe in more detail where the lawyer’s work ends.
When does a private consultation make sense?
When the three questions have answers, when the relevant professionals have done their work, and when something, even so, remains open. Only when all three are met does work like ours have a place of its own.
Nor does it make sense when you are in a hurry. In matters like these, haste almost always means the decision has not actually been taken, and a decision that has not been taken will not hold. That is why we say that haste is a signal: if nothing concrete is lost by waiting a few days, the urgency is not coming from the situation.
What happens next is simple. There is a first private conversation, by telephone or on WhatsApp, in English, with Tony Alcalá. You tell us as much as you wish, in whatever order you choose, and our first question is usually the one suggested here: since when? We then assess whether we can contribute anything and give you a yes or a no, with the reason for it. We describe in detail what happens before we accept a case.
You can have the chronology in front of you as it stands, with its question marks and crossings-out. People who reach this point usually want someone outside all their circles to go through the whole series with them: someone outside the company, the family and the advisers.
If the answer is yes, we agree what will be done, over what period and at what price. The price is a set amount that does not change afterwards; we explain separately how the work is invoiced. The work runs alongside that of your lawyer, your accountant and your doctor, never in their place, and each of them stays in charge of their own field. Nothing is set in motion until you have decided on it calmly.
If the answer is no, we say so as well, and why: because the series belongs to another professional’s field, because the decision is not yet ripe, or because what is on the page is not a series. All three are useful answers, and none of them costs you anything.
Frequently asked questions
How can I tell a run of bad luck from a repeating pattern?
A run of bad luck comes to an end of its own accord and stays in one area of life; a pattern persists after circumstances have changed and can move from the professional to the personal. To tell them apart, write the events down in date order, strike out names and amounts, and compare the form of each episode. If the form matches and your professionals find no common cause, it may make sense to look at it again, calmly and without haste.
What should I do when deals keep falling through?
First, ask the professionals involved to review each deal and, above all, the whole period rather than only the latest one. Then draw up a chronology: the date, what happened, the explanation given at the time and what had changed just before. If a common form appears and they confirm that their part was sound each time, a private consultation may make sense, without haste and alongside their work.
How do I write a chronology of events?
On one or two sheets, with one line per event, in date order. Each line gives the date, what happened in a neutral sentence, the explanation offered at the time and what had changed just before. Your company, your family, your property and your private life all go on the same sheet. Write facts rather than interpretations, then read the whole thing in one sitting on another day, as if it belonged to a stranger.
Does a private consultation make sense if my lawyers and advisers find nothing?
It can, if they have examined the whole series rather than the latest episode and something is still left open. That is the point at which our work begins: each professional confirms that their part was sound, and yet something remains open. We work alongside them, never in their place, and only after a first conversation in which we assess the situation and set the price before anything starts.
Do I need to be sure there is a pattern before consulting?
No. What helps is an ordered, dated account, not certainty. The chronology, with its doubts marked, is enough for a first conversation, whose purpose is precisely to assess whether we can contribute anything. If the series belongs to another professional’s field, or what is on the page is not a series, we tell you in that same conversation, with the reason, and there is nothing to pay.
If your situation requires it, present it.
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