Strategy Meets Reality Podcast

Strategy as Pattern: Navigating Power, Fit, and Time

• Mike Jones • Season 1 • Episode 3

Share episode

Strategy isn’t a plan—it’s a pattern.

In this episode, systems thinker and strategy expert Patrick Hoverstadt joins host Mike Jones to explore what strategy looks like in real life: dynamic, context-driven, and shaped by power, fit, and timing.

Patrick introduces the Patterns of Strategy approach, offering a powerful lens to understand the relational, political, and temporal dimensions of strategic positioning—far beyond alignment or linear models.

If you're tired of empty strategy decks and want to understand how strategy really unfolds in complexity, this one’s for you.

🔍 In this episode:

  • Why strategy is a pattern of positioning over time
  • Understanding power and fit as core to strategic dynamics
  • Why “alignment” is often a trap
  • How to navigate ecosystems and competing players
  • Using patterns, not plans, to steer in uncertainty

Guest Bio:
Patrick Hoverstadt is the author of Patterns of Strategy and The Grammar of Systems. He works with senior leadership teams on strategic direction and organisational viability in complex systems.

📘 Learn more about Patterns of Strategy: https://amzn.eu/d/5ieaTGz


🎧 Keywords: strategy, systems thinking, Patrick Hoverstadt, organisational design, complexity, leadership, decision-making

Send Mike a Message

👂 Enjoying the show?
Subscribe and leave a review on your favourite platform — it helps more people find the podcast.

🔗 Full episodes, show notes, and resources: https://www.lbiconsulting.com/strategymeetsreality-podcast

📺 Watch on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@StrategyMeetsReality
🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Buzzsprout

💬 Connect with host Mike Jones → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-h-jones/

Patrick Hoverstadt (00:00)
absolutely about the relationship between the organisation and its environment

for about a generation had management thinking fetish on efficiency an assumption the world's stable.

there are no strategic environments where you're the only actor so if you're not taking into account what everybody else is doing what's the chances it's going to work

Mike Jones (00:14)
Yes.

Welcome to strategy meets reality podcast. Today I'm joined by Patrick Hoverstart,

give us bit of context about you and what you've been up to lately.

Patrick Hoverstadt (00:59)
Usual stuff really so we do stuff around organisation design, do stuff around strategy, do stuff around modeling business ecosystems, we do stuff around transformation.

and some of the organizational stuff is in multi-agency systems and that sort of So I've been doing some of all of that recently. I've been doing some strategy stuff, been doing some ecosystem modeling last week I think. Picking up some work we've done previously with the client. So same as same as, know. Wide range of organisations, public sector, private sector, third sector.

So yeah, that's us.

Mike Jones (01:34)
Cool.

love to pick more about the ecosystem modeling as we go through your conversation. But let's dive in then. So great question to start with. How do you, define strategy and how does that challenge the conventional thinking?

Patrick Hoverstadt (01:37)
Mm-hmm.

I've got a formal definition which since I can't remember verbatim I'm going to sort of paraphrase. really for strategies about changing the fit between you know the organisation let's say it's an organisation we do the strategy for changing the fit between that organisation and its strategic environment to its advantage. You do that by changing

Mike Jones (02:14)
Mm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (02:17)
basically how it uses power and time so there's three critical dimensions fit power and time and it's working with those really and generally speaking you're changing the power and the time and the bit of the way it fits in order to change the overall fit but it's absolutely absolutely about the relationship between the organisation and its environment

or with key actors in its environment and because we're looking at it systemically the focus is on the nature of the relationship so you know conventional strategy tends to be you either look at the organisation or you start with the organisation or you start with the the market typically and then you try to work out something about one from the other

what you do in systems really is focus on the nature of the relationship it's the relationship that the reality is the dynamics of those relationships are what drives strategic direction it's not the plan it's not what we wanted to happen it's

those relationships that we're locked into and where they're naturally going so strategy is about basically understanding that, getting a grip of it once you understand the relationships then you can do something about it

Mike Jones (03:23)
Hmm.

that really challenges against the conventional wisdom of strategy. Mainly you see it there. Yeah, they're really focused on sort of inside outs, but I'd mainly argue mostly just focused inside. And also, that word to your advantage is, I think it's quite crucial because it well, it breaks off the dominant thing about it's just all about winning.

Patrick Hoverstadt (03:31)
Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Jones (03:49)
and actually opens up a different perspective about collaboration, know, definitely for third sector and public sector. It's not all about winning. It's about collaboration and relationships.

Patrick Hoverstadt (03:50)
Yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah. and

private sector as well, Mike. before we were doing strategy work, and I remember the first conference paper I ever wrote, which is around the development of medium sized businesses and how they grew, right?

I noticed the same pattern take 10 organisations that we worked with that had grown and prospered in the medium-sized sector and what we saw was that in nine out of ten they'd followed exactly the same strategy.

and it was a collaboration strategy, it wasn't competitive. They grew, they prospered because they were collaborating well and that was the trick, that's what propelled them to grow four or five times in size. So I think that's true private sector, public sector and third sector.

Mike Jones (04:28)
Okay.

Mm.

Yeah.

I think that's good to see there's more of a dynamic interplay when you think about strategy and organisations, I think it locked into this aspiration first approach, is, regardless of what's happening externally to the organisation, we're going to have an aspiration. Most strategies normally are going to be around

Patrick Hoverstadt (05:10)
Ha ha ha ha

Mike Jones (05:13)
we're going to be the best at X or we've got the most incredible thing. Well, we know that's not strategy. It's just an aspiration. So where's your thoughts on that?

Patrick Hoverstadt (05:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

No absolutely I mean it's and going back to the thing I mean I kind of cut across you with the yeah and private sector the thing you were saying before that Mike I think is absolutely bang on so most conventional strategy that it's kind of rooted in a just we want to do this or we want to be this you know

Mike Jones (05:40)
Mm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (05:41)
So mean a lot of it goes sort of vision, mission, strategy, blah blah blah, you know the plan and whoopie doop, which would be great if it worked but most of the time it doesn't work and the vision bit is the aspiration and the plan is basically just us you know and I mean obviously you know you think about this in terms of the relationship with the environment

obviously that misses out the fact that everybody else you know there are no strategic environments where you're the only actor so if you're not taking into account what everybody else is doing what's the chances it's going to work

Mike Jones (06:11)
Yes.

Patrick Hoverstadt (06:17)
I mean they're not good are they you know so systemically you kind of go yeah if you're just basing it on what you want to do and how you're going to do it

Mike Jones (06:20)
No.

Patrick Hoverstadt (06:30)
you'd expect that to work maybe 10 % of the time you know because it's going to hit what other people are doing and what we find in terms of the survey results works about 10 % of the time

Mike Jones (06:36)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. But

organisations still seem to be wedded in this idea. And I suppose people that probably follow you or follow me were probably sort of fed up of us talking about this in a way that why are we still going on this so-called conventional route of strategy when we know that it's not working and it's definitely not going to carry on working as we become more unpredictable.

Patrick Hoverstadt (06:49)
Yeah.

Mm-mm.

It's interesting isn't it? mean you've got a psychology background and I haven't so this is all your fault really. I'm fascinated because quite often I get get strategy clients where they kind of expect to do that you know vision, vision blah blah blah and they know it's not going to work but they still want to do it.

Mike Jones (07:17)
Hahaha!

Patrick Hoverstadt (07:32)
I suppose some of that's the security blanket of that's what I was taught at business school and you know if I stand up and do a talk and say right this is what the failure rate of conventional strategy is nobody ever goes no it's not it's actually you know far less than that it doesn't happen everybody knows it doesn't work but there's some

Mike Jones (07:54)
Mmm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (07:56)
some weird thing going on that people well you know it's the old thing isn't it it's easier to split an atom than to you know get someone to change their mind you know so I think it is that it's yeah

Mike Jones (08:06)
Yeah.

Yeah. And I suppose we're trying to fight against a whole industry where based on the fact that, know, and time, I want to come back to time in the moment because it all comes in industry because every year they'll have an offsite because that's the thing we do. and then they'll probably spend most of time as I always joke around throwing tennis balls at each other, building marshmallow towers, cause that's what we do. Then we'll scramble over a vision statement, mission statement and behaviors, which blows my mind because we.

Patrick Hoverstadt (08:15)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Jones (08:38)
We're trying to recreate a I suppose, behavioral look of the organisation every year. And then we turn it into a house on a PowerPoint deck. And it just seems to be rinse and repeat that happens. Yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (08:48)
yeah yeah yeah Greek

yes another Greek temple you know four pillars which none of or five pillars none of which are actually to do with you know are actually strategy that they're all you know yeah but basic stuff that you yeah okay great lovely but it isn't going to get you where you want to go you know

Mike Jones (08:54)
Yes.

a to-do list.

No, and again, because arguably it's all inside focus. They're just looking at, yeah, they're not looking at that relationship.

Patrick Hoverstadt (09:16)
It's all inside focused yeah it's all inside focused yeah I mean you

know the the closest it gets to the outside world is and we want to be number one or whatever it is you know but that's that's I mean you you've come out the military haven't you I mean if you tried doing you know military strategy like that what would happen?

Mike Jones (09:27)
Yes.

Oh, correct, it'd be carnage. Maybe, yeah, no, no, it'd be carnage. Again, because in the military, the first question we always ask is, you know, what's the situation? How does it affect us? We're looking at the external environment and understanding

Patrick Hoverstadt (09:37)
Yeah, not in a good way.

Yeah you're looking at the

signal and the signal you're looking at terrain you're looking at what the enemy might do you're looking at you know everybody else around and that's built in isn't it? Don't do any of that in conventional business strategy you know

Mike Jones (09:59)
Yeah, and then that's what's...

No,

and that information is then what starts to inform what we do, the aspiration essentially, but it's not an aspiration. But yes, that's why...

Patrick Hoverstadt (10:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah but your strategic

intent is in that context isn't it? It's built from that. not sort of... it doesn't just come in.

Mike Jones (10:15)
Yeah.

And that's what I find most surprising when I left the military and I went into organisations and looked at how they'd done strategy. I was sort of taken aback.

Patrick Hoverstadt (10:29)
Yeah yeah it's it's I mean it's lovely I mean the whole vision mission you know get a plan and it'll it'll all work out swimmingly it's a totally plausible story and it would be it would be absolutely fine if it worked but I mean the hard fact is it doesn't work most of the time so you know what are we doing frankly

Mike Jones (10:44)
Mmm. No.

Well, yeah, and what

gets me and, you know, I'd love to hear your perspective on this. And I've been thinking about this for quite a bit is around, it seems to be every time they go to strategy, it's almost like they're trying to recreate the purpose of their organisation, where we know what the organisation is there for, what we should do. And that's not fundamentally going to change.

Patrick Hoverstadt (11:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Jones (11:16)
every year that we've constructed in our heads, all it is is what's changing is our fit in the external environment. And that's what we need to try and keep a handle on.

Patrick Hoverstadt (11:17)
No. No.

Yeah,

yeah and I think it's...

Again if you do a comparison with the military there's a series of things aren't there from sort of grand strategy which is you know kind of where are we in the world you know. Who should we be allied with, who should we not be allied with, all that sort of stuff. And you can see that playing out now over you know

Mike Jones (11:37)
Mmm.

Yes.

Patrick Hoverstadt (11:53)
Trump Putin China Ukraine you know that's grand strategy stuff you know. The strategy stuff is how do we fight this battle how do we fight this campaign and then you get into sort tactical stuff and all that. Now if you translate that all into business what people talk about strategy isn't strategy it's like grand strategy it's where should we play.

Mike Jones (11:56)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (12:20)
there's nothing

that fills the gap that strategy does in the military in business you know you go straight from the ground strategy to the plan which is you know in military terms kind of order of battle stuff you know

Mike Jones (12:32)
Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (12:33)
and the tactics. there's a gap in the business kind of lexicon of how you do this. That would be filled by strategy in the military but there hasn't been, there just hasn't been that set of techniques, you know.

Mike Jones (12:46)
No,

because if you look at a lot of what people were used to when developing strategy, you've got Canvas' galore at the moment. I think everyone's scrapping to find a canvas. Or you've got Roger Martin's, I forgot what he calls it, but his thing with aspiration capabilities. Again, it's that level, that fractal level higher in the grand strategy where

Patrick Hoverstadt (12:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Jones (13:11)
You're not redoing that every year or every so often.

Patrick Hoverstadt (13:13)
No,

mean that should be pretty damn constant. You might shift it in a decade, but you really, really shouldn't be shifting that often because when you do that, you've got to change all your infrastructure and stuff because that's all geared to that. So that's big stuff to shift.

Mike Jones (13:16)
Mmm.

Mm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (13:36)
So if you take something like BP deciding it's going to go into renewables, that's that level of shift. We're going to go from oil and gas to this. And with it comes a whole we need to learn completely new technologies now. It's fundamental. We're a strategy, we should be. This is what we've got.

Mike Jones (13:46)
Yes.

Yes, you're fundamentally changing the whole capability of the organisation.

Patrick Hoverstadt (14:03)
This is the situation we're in. Right now what do we do? What do we do in this situation to get us into a better place and it's much shorter term really. Good strategy is you know.

Mike Jones (14:06)
Hmm.

Yeah. And

that's where, you know, time, and I know there's a slight difference between what we mean time in patterns, which will come onto, but time in the sense of when we think about a grand strategy and strategy, time is rarely a thing that I've seen in documents. The only thing that I see time is referenced as is the cycle, which is a construct that we've made up around, you know, most public organisations are a five year.

Patrick Hoverstadt (14:16)
Yeah.

Mm, mm, mm, mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Jones (14:40)
planning cycle because that's

the funding they give. So they've constructed themselves not beyond that. civilian organisations do the same thing. But really when you think about time in the external environment, it's really important because if we say we're going to do something because it's nature to fit, we need to do it within time.

Patrick Hoverstadt (14:44)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

massive massive massive

massive yeah it's massive thing in there. So I remember talking to Steve Morlidge who used to run the Beyond Budgeting group which was in Europe which was a bunch of blue chip organisations trying to work out how to do finance better and

Mike Jones (15:14)
Mmm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (15:15)
It's beyond budgeting because of course the budgeting was an annual cycle and it locked one of problems that we're trying to wrestle with is it locked organisations into a one year an annual cadence you know which is like

well you do it on the agricultural year you know and of course that's fine if the world's moving at that pace but the world isn't moving at that pace you know so sometimes you need to move a lot faster and sometimes you need to move move slower you know it's why on earth would you do it like that and as you say you know a lot of organisations are locked into this five-year planning cycle and

Mike Jones (15:31)
Yeah

No.

Patrick Hoverstadt (15:51)
I mean that's inherited from the Soviet system. I mean how well did that work? This was Stalin's five-year plans. yeah, yeah that's good.

Mike Jones (15:56)
right, okay. Mmm, yeah, yeah,

Well...

There's

no doubt there's a lot of uni students, they're watching this, they're probably saying, yeah, of course it works. But in reality, you finish uni, we know it doesn't. But that brings a really interesting point. And often I get challenged about this, me and you, we often talk about the dynamic approach and with execution as well. You need to be adaptable, self-organising. But finance is a constraint to that, because if we're locked in,

Patrick Hoverstadt (16:12)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Jones (16:36)
it can prevent

Patrick Hoverstadt (16:36)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (16:37)
people from being adaptable. So what do you recommend to leaders to try and square that one?

Patrick Hoverstadt (16:41)
Well there are lots of time, well first thing is understand the rate of change in your environment because basically the equation is your organisation has got to be able to change about as fast as your environment is changing otherwise if you can't keep up with that you're dead in the probably not even in the long run in the medium term so have an understanding of how fast that's changing

Mike Jones (16:48)
Mmm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (17:05)
most people haven't got a clue which is not a great start you know and it helps to look ahead on that if you look you can tell how fast it's changing you know you really can and sometimes it's surprising I mean remember doing some stuff with

Mike Jones (17:15)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (17:25)
on IT and I asked a bunch of IT guys how fast does the hardware market change and they went it's very very changing. No it actually isn't it's pretty regular it's like a 10 year cycle. So platforms change on basically roughly a 10 year cycle so you know when the next ones come in and you can plan for it so it'll change and that'll be reasonably stable and then it'll change.

Sectors change at different rates. Aerospace changes quite slowly. IT actually changes quite slowly. hardware bit. Software is faster but it's still not it's not actually super fast.

Mike Jones (17:53)
Yes.

Patrick Hoverstadt (18:05)
It's an operational level, strategically it's not. So the first thing is understand how fast your sector is changing and gear up to be able to change at that rate. Like you say, some of the things like finances are constrained, so is technology. If you've got to change your tech base, that's a big problem and skills and all those sorts of things.

Mike Jones (18:18)
Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (18:24)
One of the easiest things to change though is the rate of decision making. Well because you know if you've got a senior management team who are doing the strategy and it takes them two years to make a decision and that's you know I've had strategy teams where it took four years you know.

Mike Jones (18:31)
Okay.

Patrick Hoverstadt (18:43)
for something coming in to them going that's a thing to actually make a decision about it could be four years well you know that's half a dozen people you know eight, nine, ten whatever it is people that's all you've got to check you know if you can cut that down from four years or two years or whatever it is to a week and that's not that hard to do you've just saved yourself two years time you've given yourself two years extra flexibility

Mike Jones (18:43)
Yeah, yes.

Patrick Hoverstadt (19:07)
You you've given the organisation which might be a thousand people you know ten people have changed which means gives a thousand people in the organisation an extra two years to do the changes that they need well you know that's a no-brainer isn't it? So I think understanding those things and there are lots of things you can do to speed yourself up speed up the organisation

Mike Jones (19:08)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, and that's a really good point because also not only does it give time back, but also increases your choices because the sooner you make decisions, you've got more choices. And I think that.

Patrick Hoverstadt (19:38)
yeah massively yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean this is very

john boyd OODA isn't it you know the speed of your decision making is is is can be a critical advantage really you know

Mike Jones (19:46)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And I think that comes into the idea of time in patterns of strategy, just define what you mean by time for patterns.

Patrick Hoverstadt (19:59)
Well because it's a relational view of the world okay so we're looking at us in relation to some other you know entity so it could be a market sector it could be an individual organisation it could be you know a group of organisations but essentially what we're looking at there in the time dimension is are we faster or slower or roughly synchronized with this other

Mike Jones (20:23)
Mm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (20:25)
entity that we're coupled to and sometimes you need to be faster and sometimes you need to be slower and sometimes you need to be synchronized so strategically working out well first of all what's the differential between the two you know are we faster are we slower are we synchronized and then working out what it should be and then making it happen you know so

Mike Jones (20:38)
Yep.

Yes.

Patrick Hoverstadt (20:46)
If you're in collaboration, mean we've had loads of strategy exercises where what they need to do is collaborate and one of the things to play with there is slowing you down so that you can collaborate because then you're moving at the same speed as the other party and that makes it easier to collaborate. In competition quite often we need to speed up.

Mike Jones (21:06)
Yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (21:09)
know situation where the world's suddenly the world's picked up speed which happens you know it can be trundling along the terrain and then suddenly it accelerates off and I mean everybody's talking now about you know this is a this is a seriously VUCA moment in time well you better speed up then you know at least as you say to create the options you know

Mike Jones (21:25)
Yeah, yeah.

Well...

Yeah. And you see this as well, you know, just on what we were talking about, about using a bit of futures and actually looking not only at the future, but also looking at the external environment because this speeding up part, this is forced Europe at the moment to try and speed up exponentially. And you could probably argue, are they going to try and speed up faster than they can handle, which then is going to cause some other issues. And you could say a lot of that is because

Patrick Hoverstadt (21:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Jones (21:57)
I'm they must have had people looking, thinking, you know, if Trump gets in, what are the likely scenarios that we're going to be faced? And are we ready for that? And it's almost as if they've just remained reactive, which decreases their choices and now puts them in a position that you could argue is a bit vulnerable.

Patrick Hoverstadt (22:16)
I think so and I mean this you know we're talking about it in a sort of geopolitical military context but the same thing applies in business context so in this case you know if you if you look at the situation you know facing Europe's political leaders and military leaders part of that's technological so you know you've got the tech in the military that you've got

Mike Jones (22:25)
Yes.

Patrick Hoverstadt (22:38)
if you want to gear it up faster what you're to do? It takes a long time to develop new kit. Well it does now, it didn't used to, but it does now. So that's kind of drag on things. But we have the same thing in business, you suddenly want to change and there will be bits of the business, there'll be aspects of the business that really don't change fast.

Mike Jones (22:42)
yeah yeah yeah

Mmm.

No,

and I think that brings a good point when we talk about, you know, speeding up or increasing. It's quite easy when you do it with strategy with people, leaders, they'll just say, we just need to be faster. And you're like, well, yeah, yeah, obviously.

Patrick Hoverstadt (23:10)
Yeah but...

Mike Jones (23:17)
I think, and this is where we,

Patrick Hoverstadt (23:17)
I'll just get my magic wand out and...

Mike Jones (23:20)
and this is it. We're trying to wrestle with these two things. One is the external environment, you know, our good model of it, and also one of the internal environment and our model of that. And it's about being specific, saying, you know, yes, we need to speed up, but we need this part of the organisation, yes, that bit, and all of it.

Patrick Hoverstadt (23:28)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

That bit, that bit, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Mike Jones (23:41)
And I think this is where execution

Patrick Hoverstadt (23:41)
yeah.

Mike Jones (23:42)
becomes very difficult because with the grand strategy or not the grand strategy, the conventional view of strategy, where they've got the levels mixed, they're trying to change the whole organisation where they don't need to change the whole organisation, they just need to change parts of the organisation.

Patrick Hoverstadt (24:00)
No,

yeah yeah that's right and and I think you know I mentioned before that that you know we've had cases where you know you look at it and you go right if we can speed up the rate of decision making of the board that involves getting 10 people to alter their behavior whereas if

you know that saves us two years because it's extra two years to change the behavior of the thousand people in the organisation you know that that's going to help and you can do sometimes you can do that well if we change you know ideally we want to change this but if we change this that's going to give us more time where it's going to make it easier to to do that but

execution terms if you've got your strategy well understood like this is the nature of the fit and this is what we need to change you know we need to speed this up and then you've got a decent understanding of your organisation you can be really specific you can go yeah it's that that that that they need to change in these ways that's the plan we don't need to change it all it's those bits and they need to change in these specific ways thank you very much that'll

Mike Jones (25:01)
Yes.

Yes.

Patrick Hoverstadt (25:08)
you know and

Mike Jones (25:09)
Yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (25:10)
that that just cuts down the burden of execution massively typically you know because it's only a relatively small proportion of the organisation that needs to change it might only be like 5 % in some cases it's very I mean rarely it's going to be more than 25 % but

Mike Jones (25:17)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (25:35)
If you look at how it's done conventionally it's like we're going to sheep dip the whole organisation in this stuff and everybody's going to have to be... and it never happens you know.

Mike Jones (25:40)
Yes.

Yeah.

No. And a lot of the time when you've got your strategy that's understood, there's stuff that you've already got the capability, you're just gonna redirect it in a slightly different way. You're gonna give it an intent to them to use it. Or there may be slight capability shifts you need to do in order to go through the change. Or, you know, that's where the relationship between the strategy and the organisation and the organisation strategy need to be understood.

Patrick Hoverstadt (25:57)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm. Mm.

Mike Jones (26:10)
to as an

input to understand actually how much or how little can we do. Yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (26:14)
how could we do that yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah and I mean some things you can you can sort of speed up so you know I mean yeah I'm absolutely with you on usually it's right we've got this capability let's turn it in a different direction occasionally well sometimes it's it's and we need this extra capability and sometimes you can build that sometimes you just have to buy it you know we'll do a partnership with these guys because they've got that. Thank you very much you know

Mike Jones (26:34)
Yeah, yeah.

And I think

that's where the time comes in because obviously if you need to do it within 18 months or shorter, then that's going to be a thing to go, well, can we actually self-create it or do we need to outsource it?

Patrick Hoverstadt (26:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember doing this with global player, I don't know what they were 70,000 people or something. And we were working with part of it and they needed to build a computer science capability. But to do that, they had to offload.

this group had to offload a load of work that they were already doing in order to create the space to be able to build a know and that took them yeah I think it took them just over a year you know. Now they could have bought it in except they wouldn't have been allowed because they're part of a bigger organisation they wouldn't have been allowed to buy it in

Mike Jones (27:25)
Mm.

Yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (27:36)
If they'd been totally free they could have bought it in but actually you know it took them as long as it took them you know they had to offload a load of work create the extra budget then they could build this thing you know which was I think it was like five percent something like that it's less than ten percent might have been seven percent of their organisation size was the new thing you know

Mike Jones (27:47)
Mmm.

Yes.

And this is really, it comes, it's quite easy for us to sit on here and, you know, talk about this because we, we intimately know it and we practice it every day where, where we're trying to obviously help leaders is think about how's that relevant to them. And I think coming back to the ecosystem and why is that so important in the external environment, making them understand how actually, well, one, to understand it, two,

how to let it inform your strategy can be really useful. Because then you can get this granularity that we're talking about. Once you get that granularity, it's easier to execute.

Patrick Hoverstadt (28:27)
Yeah.

Yeah it is, I mean it's as you said it's been specific about it you know and I think the other thing I found Mike is that using patterns of strategy it's so quick to do, it's so quick to do.

Mike Jones (28:43)
Mmm, yes.

Patrick Hoverstadt (28:45)
you know and you can do the you can do the what if experiment you know you can do the okay so if we did this how would that work and what we need to do and yeah that's not going to work because we'll never get that to happen in the time we need okay another strategy you know and you can do that in you know you can do multiple of those really really fast really fast

Mike Jones (29:07)
Yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (29:09)
Lucy who developed the approach with and I had a client and the the this kind of shadow team came to us and said the boards thinking about three strategies We don't we don't think that's a rich enough set of things. Could you come up with some more? And we just sat down and went through the catalog of patterns of strategy and went. Yep, that would help. No, that wouldn't help. Yep, that would help. But then they wouldn't be able to execute it, you know done that would have what would this one look like?

but it look like this with this you know and after about an hour and a quarter we had a had a stack of like 20 odd strategies that they could play out and how they would help and what they would look like and and it was I mean incredibly quick incredibly quick to do including nah they won't be you know yes in theory but no in practice they couldn't do that they couldn't do that either they haven't got the capability or they couldn't do it in time or you know

Mike Jones (29:54)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, just for context for listeners, when we're talking about the patterns in Patterns Strategy book, there's about, correct me, there's about 120 strategies today.

Patrick Hoverstadt (30:15)
there's 80 in the

book and there's 112 that we've collected in total now so there's 80 in the book when we got to that so Lucy in particular carried on collecting after we finished the book so yeah it's like collecting Pokemon yeah

Mike Jones (30:20)
Okay, yep. Yeah.

It's like collecting Pokemon.

Patrick Hoverstadt (30:34)
Yeah I mean when we were writing they were accidental actually Mike so what we were after was not the patterns what we were after was

Mike Jones (30:39)
Alright.

Patrick Hoverstadt (30:43)
understanding how to understand well trying to get a grip on what happens in the relationship between two two organisations or an organisation a market whatever it might be so what happens in those dynamics that is driving the strategic direction you go in so it getting a handle on that and once we got that

Mike Jones (30:59)
Hmm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (31:02)
we just saw repeating patterns so then we started collecting the patterns

Mike Jones (31:05)
Yes.

blows apart the traditional view that you've really only got two choices, which is, know, cost leader or differentiator. Which. Yeah, You say that people are screaming at the podcast right now, go what? But, you know. It's. No, exactly. Yeah, I'm sure we got him in for a coffee. You'll understand.

Patrick Hoverstadt (31:11)
Yeah.

yeah yeah yeah yeah that that porter thing yeah yeah

I doubt if Michael Porter's watching, mate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Jones (31:32)
But those things, to think that we can boil it down reductively into two things, I think that's part of the problem with strategy nowadays. We try reduct things down into simple ideas or vague statements, which no one understands.

Patrick Hoverstadt (31:41)
Yeah.

Yeah I think that's right and I mean just the richness of you know when you look at it through the patterns lens you go that's quite a lot of successful strategies you know that's like you know 100 different ways to win

Mike Jones (32:01)
Mmm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (32:04)
I mean it's interesting because when we developed it because that whole relational view is so different to the conventional view which is just like we want to do this we didn't think people would get it but people really get it and I think it's because we all live in you know as individuals we all live in relationships so we kind of get it you know what we do what we've conventionally done in organisations is actually weird

Mike Jones (32:15)
Yes.

Mmm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (32:28)
because if you think if you think about a person who behaved like we teach organisations to do strategy think of a person doing that you would run a mile from them you know you just go that that that person's an absolute nutter you know because they'd be they'd be so fixated on just what they wanted and ignoring everybody around them

Mike Jones (32:38)
Yeah,

Patrick Hoverstadt (32:51)
and just straight at the my objective is that you would spot them a mile off and you'd run like hell well if you had any sense you would you know

Mike Jones (32:55)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, we had to call those people, you know, really low in self-awareness and probably narcissist. But, and that's good. Cause when, once I left the military, I was really confused with the idea of strategy. And that's where, you know, we first met because I came across patterns of strategy. I read it and it straight away, it jumped out at me. I was like, this makes perfect sense to me in how we've always looked at strategy. So that's why straight away I got in touch with you and Lucy.

Patrick Hoverstadt (33:08)
Yeah. Yeah.

and

Yeah, yeah.

Mike Jones (33:30)
And I was like, I need to have a chat with you because I've not seen anything like this in the civilian world. And I thought it was like, I thought either I was going crazy or I was just completely wrong. Could be both.

Patrick Hoverstadt (33:39)
Yeah.

Well I think it's

a bigger shift actually Mike because for about a generation really we've had a sort of a management thinking fetish on efficiency and an assumption the world's stable.

And if the world's stable

basically you can get into a situation or you believe the world state but you can get into situation where we're doing the right stuff and then all we need to do is be more efficient doing the right stuff and that's straightforward. That's all changed in the last I don't know 10-15 years something like that and there is now you know nobody was talking about VUCA and all this sort of stuff before.

Mike Jones (34:11)
Yes, yes.

Hmm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (34:28)
and now it's like it's absolutely commonplace you so you've had you had the 2008 crash you had covid and then you've got Ukraine

Mike Jones (34:36)
Yep.

Yeah, yep.

Patrick Hoverstadt (34:37)
and it's three

massive shocks to the system and we haven't none of the world didn't settle down after the first one before the second one hit and it didn't settle down after the second one before the third one's hit you know so we're in real real real instability and now nobody goes yeah the world's stable but the conventional approach to strategy sort of a bit works at least in theory it works if the world's stable

Mike Jones (34:49)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (35:03)
the world's not stable it's got no chance you know. Now I don't think it ever was stable really but everybody thought it was until it gets smacked in the face by the 2008 recession and then Covid and then everything you know all the upheavals business upheavals that have happened as a result of Ukraine.

Mike Jones (35:04)
Yes.

Patrick Hoverstadt (35:21)
I mean those go, you don't see them all, they've been massive, know, price of steel has gone through the roof, you know, all these sorts of things, you And so now I think people are looking at it in a completely different way, but the way we were taught strategy when I was, you know, when I was a business school, assumed the world was stable.

Mike Jones (35:21)
Yes.

Yes, and predictable.

Patrick Hoverstadt (35:43)
It was

assumed that the world was stable and you can just plan your way through it. As soon as you go it's not stable it's going to move. The planning idea just makes no sense at all. Now that's always been the case in the military. So the military's always based its strategy on war is chaos. The business never has until now.

Mike Jones (35:50)
Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

No,

and we still all live by, you know, Von Moltke view of no plan survives contact with the enemy. And hence why the the name of this podcast is strategy meets reality is a play on that. Yeah. It's like, what do do? And, and leading on that, I know you mentioned earlier about ecosystem modeling and also the premise of relationships with the external environment. So how can we help leaders understand

Patrick Hoverstadt (36:09)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

mutual reality, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Jones (36:31)
their relationship, one, the external environment, and then two, how do we use our understanding of the ecosystem to inform our decisions?

Patrick Hoverstadt (36:40)
Well first thing I go to on understanding relationship is patterns as an approach because it's dead easy to do as an approach. Really really really easy, really really fast.

Mike Jones (36:47)
Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (36:51)
One of the things that I think is quite important sorry this is a bit off-piece but one of the things I think is quite important is that and you see this when you're doing patterns of strategy with people it's actually visceral they really really feel it in their guts you you can see them laying out

Mike Jones (36:56)
That's right.

Mmm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (37:12)
I mean for those who haven't seen it it's like there's a deck of cards, there's a set of cards and there's a board it's played out on either physically or virtually. You can see people doing that and get into and you you lay out the positions of us and the counterparty whoever that might be and you see people going that's why you know.

and it gets them in the guts it really really does now to move to actually decide to move our organisation from doing what it's doing to doing something else

Mike Jones (37:34)
Mm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (37:44)
that's an emotional process if senior leaders aren't emotionally engaged in that process it doesn't happen so they have to be so you have to take them through a process where it's emotional you know they have to go through the angst they have to get the hope at the other side and go right if we do this then otherwise they won't do it they simply won't do it so that's part one I think Mike but you were kind of aiming at the ecosystem bit I think

Mike Jones (38:09)
Yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (38:09)
and

that's kind of the extended well there's all these other relationships going on the relationships not just that don't just touch us but touch others all of that all of that kind of modeling that which is not hard to do gives you a forward view of where this is all going you know and it's more hazy so it's less certain

So if you do a patterns exercise you can quite often go my god that is going to happen unless we change something and people can be pretty certain about it. With ecosystem modeling there are so many moving parts it's much less predictable usually but you can make direct predictions from it in some cases you know and it gives you a much much longer view so this is much closer to the grand strategy question.

Mike Jones (38:45)
Yes.

Mm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (38:54)
you know of how is our world shifting and then that helps you frame the strategy question of right so what should we do in the relationships we've got or do we need to create new ones so I think the two go very very well together and for the ecosystem modeling you don't need tons of data you know you can do it with you can do it

Mike Jones (38:54)
Yeah, yeah.

ID.

Patrick Hoverstadt (39:23)
I don't want say it's kind of rough and ready but you can do it with not desperately precise data because it is bigger brush you know it's a broader sweep of time and space.

Mike Jones (39:29)
Yeah. Yeah.

That's the thing, isn't it? We can try and get into the trap where we're trying to find the perfect information, but we all know that there's that element of darkness, there's stuff that we just won't know. But what it does give us is that introduction of futures. So it brings futures plus into the current day. And it creates that shared understanding. It doesn't have to be perfect because really what we're asking for is, are we

Patrick Hoverstadt (39:38)
No, no, never is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Jones (40:00)
going to maintain fit in this ecosystem? If not, then what stuff do we think we need to start concerning ourselves with now so that we can maintain our fit over the long term?

Patrick Hoverstadt (40:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah and I think you've flagged up a really really important point. I don't think we talk about enough really or I don't talk about enough but there is no data about the future. know the strategies about the future it's not about the past it's not about now it's about the future. There is no data about the future by definition there can't be. So if you're searching for the perfect data it doesn't exist you know.

Mike Jones (40:26)
Mmm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (40:39)
strategy is about creating a future you know and it is an act of creation or somebody's creation if it's not yours it's somebody else's somebody else is creating your future for you thank you very much it wasn't the one I wanted you know so that whole thing that people again have been trained for erroneously which is let you know do the do the analysis get the data doesn't exist

Mike Jones (40:50)
Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (41:02)
I mean some of it does but mostly it doesn't. So what you've got to look for again is things like trends. What's been happening? it going to continue? If this thing's coming in from here and this thing's going on there are they going to collide?

Mike Jones (41:09)
Yeah, yeah.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (41:22)
If

you've got, we had an ecosystem modeling exercise with a client we've just picked up again and like it's an area, a tech area and one end's like stuck just not moving and the other end's going away at a hell of a pace and you go well there's nothing holding them together it's going to rip apart. This is going to split into two sectors.

Mike Jones (41:45)
Yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (41:47)
So what's the strategic question? Where do you want to play? Do you want to be the front end or the back end? That's the strategic question. Simple.

Mike Jones (41:51)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that really plays at the heart of, you know, difference between what we talk about strategy and what the conventional view strategy is. Because I guarantee if I went into most organisations now, not to be disrespectful to anyone, it's just what we've been conditioned to do for so long. If I asked them what's your strategy, no doubt they'll pull out either, you know, huge document of stuff or a page that looks like a Greek.

Patrick Hoverstadt (42:10)
Yeah.

Greek temple.

Mike Jones (42:21)
Greek

temple. And it would be very superfluous, no doubt. Those of, we're going to be the best at this and all this stuff. But really when it comes down to it, it's about the choices, manoeuvres that we're going to make to achieve fit. that fit, know, the reason why I like that term fit is because it's relative to anyone given their context. Where do you need to be to maintain viability?

Patrick Hoverstadt (42:33)
Mm. Mm. Mm.

Yes, yeah,

yeah, yeah. I mean we survive, you know, we survive as individuals, societies, as a species, as whatever and as organisations by having relationships that work, you know. I mean, if you're not doing...

Mike Jones (43:02)
Mmm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (43:04)
If you're not delivering some value commercially, organisationally, if you're not delivering some value and getting some value back, you die as an organisation. It's that simple. All that depends on how you fit. It depends on your strategy to fit with your environment. that's the thing that matters. That is effectively the only thing that matters is how's that working? How's that going to go? And then everything else is about understanding that and making it work to your advantage.

Mike Jones (43:16)
Yes.

And you know, what we're not saying on this is that ignore the inside only view, but you need to balance the whole. So we need to have the outside in and the inside out approach to marry up because they're both going to feed into the, well, constrain your strategy really, what's possible with that.

Patrick Hoverstadt (43:37)
No? Yeah? Yeah?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah and

I mean they're I mean I've probably done like I don't know over a hundred projects with this project well a hundred client exercises put it like that some of them moving like multiple in the same organisation.

Mike Jones (44:02)
Mmm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (44:05)
I think the closest we came to not being able to crack the problem was an organisation where we could only find one strategy that would get them out of the hole they were in. And I didn't think they'd be able to do it but bless them they did and they survived as a result.

Mike Jones (44:18)
yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (44:23)
But mostly there's like loads of options despite the fact that there's all these constraints on the outside and there's all these constraints internally. can't do this. could, you know, we'd like to do that, but we can't blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Can't move that fast. We can't, you know, we haven't got that capability. We haven't all that and we can't move there because because this would happen if we move all those external constraints, all those internal constraints. You can still find.

loads of things that would work, usually, usually, you know. And we've never ever ever found a situation where there wasn't a way out. So that was the closest where there's just one route, you know. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought we weren't going to get there, you know.

Mike Jones (44:49)
Yes. Yeah.

I left the-

No. I bet you were sweating that day. And I think that comes

to my earlier point where aspiration first, I think if you focus on aspiration first, you limit your options because you're so just focused on a predetermined way rather than understanding the context.

Patrick Hoverstadt (45:16)
Yes.

Yeah and you know there is a very very very good chance that somebody is going to scupper that aspiration for you either deliberately or just accidentally because they're not looking at it either you know and the know statistics bear that out 10 survival you know success rate for from implementing the conventional approach

Mike Jones (45:28)
Mmm.

No.

Yes.

Patrick Hoverstadt (45:43)
Which is, mean, you know, honestly, would you bet the firm on a one in ten chance?

Mike Jones (45:43)
Mmm.

No, no, I can't even get people to bet the firm on 99 % chance. Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Hoverstadt (45:49)
Yeah but people do. It's just nuts isn't it? I mean the worst

result I heard was from the great Ross Ackhoff which was a 98 % failure rate of strategic planning. I mean that was from a proper survey of organisations doing strategic planning and had a 98 % failure rate.

Mike Jones (46:04)
didn't surprise me.

Yeah. And I know we briefly touched on it and we, we, we don't have time on this podcast, but you know, lot of that is on the, you know, one is, is it actually a strategy and is the strategy for out and two, execution. I think execution hold, hold another beast that, you know, people constrain himself too much. and they can't adapt in time, but I've, you know, I can attest to the success of patterns. use it.

Patrick Hoverstadt (46:23)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

Mike Jones (46:38)
a lot and I've used it quite a bit and it's been very successful for, the clients.

Patrick Hoverstadt (46:42)
and

so easy and quick to use. I mean the big thing is it works you you end up with a strategy that will actually work and I don't say it's got a hundred percent success rate but it's a hell of a lot better than ten percent.

Mike Jones (46:46)
Mmm. Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah, and it is easy to, but what I find is really good is the conversations around, it's a model, you're modelling, you essentially got it on the table there and you can physically, you can, you visually see it and it opens up a whole dimension of conversations you're not going to get from squabbling over a vision statement.

Patrick Hoverstadt (47:10)
Yes.

Yeah.

Be interested in your view Mike so I mean I was saying before about it being an emotional or visceral process I mean have you found that

Mike Jones (47:30)
is, is the emotional part, but it's that aha moment. It's that bit. And I'm always fine with clients when you get that aha moment, or you get that of anyone, that's the point which you know that action will follow.

Patrick Hoverstadt (47:33)
Yes.

Something has flipped then hasn't it? You know? Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Jones (47:44)
Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that's

crucial and that's what it enables you to do really well. Cool.

Patrick Hoverstadt (47:50)
I mean

and it kind of goes in under the skin so it's not like you're smacking her over the head with a whole new load of concepts it's right simple questions you know of these two organisations who's got the most strength who's most innovative who's faster who's know who's shaping who you know

Mike Jones (48:03)
Yes.

Yeah, who's shaping who? Yeah, yeah.

And they're easy to understand, which I think enables the conversation. And plus it's not, I'll say it is context free in the sense that you can apply that to any context and have a useful conversation.

Patrick Hoverstadt (48:20)
Yeah.

Yes.

Mike Jones (48:37)
it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast But what would you to do is think about if there's something that you would like to leave for leaders to think about, what would that be?

Patrick Hoverstadt (48:46)
it's a distillation really of what we've been talking about. the... I mean it's not forget the planning thing it's not about the plan because you know as you say Von Moltke no plan survives contact with the enemy right.

Mike Jones (48:55)
Mmm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (48:59)
what is going to determine where your organisation goes is not the plan it is the relationships you're in so let's get a grip of that let's understand why they're going to take us because unless we can understand that they we're just being swept along and it's easy to do that it's not hard to understand

Mike Jones (49:09)
Mm.

Patrick Hoverstadt (49:18)
those relationships and where they're taking us and the forces that are driving it all it's really really easy to do.

Mike Jones (49:26)
I'll have to second that one as well. It's been an absolute pleasure. you know, I always enjoy having a conversation with you, Patrick. You know, often we will. We have to go on to to random tangents. think we've been quite good today.

Patrick Hoverstadt (49:33)
Likewise, Mike.

Mike Jones (49:39)
if you like the podcast, please like, share subscribe. Take care. See you later, Patrick. Thank you very much.

Patrick Hoverstadt (49:48)
Thanks, Mike.