The Pattern Is Predictable. The Solution Rarely Is.

By the third failed COO search, the board thinks they've finally figured it out.

They've updated the spec. Adjusted the compensation. Refined the interview process. This time, they're confident they've identified "the real issue."

I know how this movie usually ends.

The pattern is visible to anyone who's seen it before. What's not visible is whether naming the pattern will change anything, or whether this particular founder, in this particular moment, is ready to hear what the pattern actually means.

Early in my career, I mistook pattern recognition for authority. Twenty years taught me it's a lens, not a verdict.

Predicting the pattern doesn't mean you can prescribe the solution.

 

What Repeats

The patterns repeat with remarkable consistency.

The founder who can't let go fails the same way across industries, geographies, and company sizes. The sequence is familiar: executive revolving door, then safe hires who won't challenge, then benevolent micromanagement, then strategic stagnation, then burnout or board intervention. I've watched this unfold in Mexican family businesses and Silicon Valley startups. The circumstances differ. The pattern doesn't.

The enterprise executive hired into a growth company struggles with predictable mismatches. They expect resources that don't exist. They build consensus when speed matters more. They optimize systems that haven't been built yet.

The board that pushes for credentials over calibration regrets it on the same timeline. Month six: early concerns dismissed as an adjustment period. Month twelve: undeniable friction attributed to execution challenges. Month eighteen: the departure everyone saw coming but nobody named.

The patterns aren't hidden. They're visible to anyone paying attention. The question isn't whether you can see them. The question is: what do you do once you can?

 

What Doesn't Repeat

Here's what twenty years of pattern recognition hasn't taught me: what any specific client should actually do.

I've worked with founders who recognized they were the ceiling and evolved beautifully. Others who recognized the same pattern and couldn't change despite wanting to. Same diagnosis. Different outcomes.

I've seen companies replace their entire leadership team and thrive. Others who replaced their entire leadership team and collapsed. Same structural intervention. Different results based on factors that weren't visible until later.

I've watched executives take on roles I predicted would fail, only to succeed anyway. They changed the conditions. Or they changed themselves. Or the company changed around them in ways nobody anticipated.

What the pattern can't see is the set of variables that turn probability into outcome.

Whether the founder's identity is flexible enough to survive the evolution the moment requires — not whether they're willing, but whether the distance between their current self and the necessary one is crossable in the time available. Willingness is visible. Crossability isn't.

Whether the board has the patience for a transition that looks like instability before it looks like growth. Boards say they do. Fewer actually do when the quarters start slipping, and the narrative gets harder to defend.

Whether the company is in a window where change is still possible, or whether it's already past it, carrying too much momentum in the wrong direction, too much organizational memory of how things are done, too much ambient permission to stay the same.

These aren't soft variables. They're determinative ones. And they don't show up in the pattern because patterns are built from what's observable and repeatable. These variables are situational, interior, and often only legible in retrospect.

The patterns are probabilistic, not deterministic. They tell you where the road usually leads. They don't tell you whether this specific driver, on this specific day, will take the exit everyone else missed.

 

The Advisor's Actual Job

There's a temptation in my work to confuse pattern recognition with wisdom. Once you've seen something a hundred times, the diagnosis feels obvious. And when the diagnosis feels obvious, the prescription feels like it should follow automatically.

But that's not how advisory relationships actually work.

I spend less time prescribing and more time naming. Less time telling clients what to do and more time helping them see what's happening. Less time being the expert with answers and more time being the pattern recognizer who articulates what's visible but unnamed.

The value isn't in the prescription. It's in the clarity.

When a founder calls me because their third COO search is failing, I can name the pattern. I can explain why talented executives keep leaving or underperforming. I can describe the evolution from Operator to Architect that usually resolves this dynamic.

What I can't do is decide whether this particular founder is ready for that evolution. Whether their board will support it. Whether the timing is right or whether forcing the issue now will make things worse.

Those decisions belong to the people who own the consequences.

 

The Pattern I've Seen in Myself

Advisors have patterns, too.

I have a pattern of over-weighting conditions relative to individual capability. I see the environmental factors that constrain performance, and I sometimes underweight the individual who can transcend them. This is useful; it helps clients understand why talented executives fail in bad conditions. It's also limiting. Some individuals really do transform conditions rather than adapt to them.

I have a pattern of diagnosing faster than clients are ready to hear. I see the problem, name it precisely, and watch the client resist information they're not prepared to absorb. The pattern is accurate. The timing is sometimes wrong.

I have a pattern of seeing founders as sympathetic figures even when they're the problem. I understand why they can't let go. I understand the identity crisis underneath the control. This empathy is valuable. It also sometimes slows down the diagnosis that would serve the company.

Pattern recognition applied to yourself is humbling. The same frameworks that clarify others' situations reveal your own blind spots.

 

The Quiet Truth

I've been wrong more times than I've documented. Patterns I was certain about didn't materialize. Predictions I made with confidence failed. Executives I was skeptical about succeeded. Executives I championed struggled.

The patterns aren't laws. They're tendencies. They increase odds. They don't guarantee outcomes.

What they do is create useful frames for thinking. When a client says, "Our COO searches keep failing," pattern recognition lets me ask better questions. Is the founder the ceiling? Are the conditions unwinnable? Is the compensation misaligned with the caliber you need?

But the answers to those questions, and the decisions that follow from them, belong to the people living the situation. They have information I don't have. They understand constraints I can't see. They'll face consequences I won't share.

Patterns clarify. They don't command.

I name the pattern. You own the consequence.

 

Charlie Solórzano is a Managing Partner at Alder Koten, advising founders and boards on cross-border leadership transitions across the U.S. and Mexico.