Strategic Advisory
“You cannot not negotiate.”
Paul Watzlawick (freely adapted)
Your Challenge
Your organization is stuck. Key decisions are deferred, projects lose momentum, and energy bleeds into internal debates. You are navigating with a map that no longer depicts the actual terrain. You diagnose a strategic problem, yet applying the usual tools of more data, new processes, and other consultants only creates more friction.
We tend to see organizations as intricate clockworks whose problems can be solved with better plans and processes. In reality, they operate according to the logic of negotiation: a system with countless actors whose moves are governed by unspoken interests, irrational fears, and hidden power dynamics.
My approach leaves the world of strategic templates behind. Through the sharpened lens of negotiation we decipher the hidden “physics” of your organization and restore your agency on the actual terrain.
Complex Situations
With my clients I shape the playing field to ensure effective negotiations.
Building Alliances / Joint Ventures
The Challenge: A planned partnership is at risk of failing due to cultural differences and internal power struggles before it has even begun.
My Contribution: An alliance is a permanent negotiation. We make the hidden costs of integration the central issue before any contracts are signed: loss of sovereignty, cultural friction, and diverging interests. This creates a structure that functions not just on paper, but in the human terrain.
The Result: The outcome is a partnership designed for resilience. Its structure anticipates future conflict, creating a foundation that is robust not just on paper, but within the human terrain where it must actually perform.
Portfolio and Procurement Strategy
The Challenge: Your procurement strategy is reactive and primarily price-driven instead of proactive and value-oriented.
My Contribution: We redesign the dialogue with your suppliers. Instead of arguing over price, we expand the playing field across the entire value-creation space. We give your teams the mandate and the tools to claim this space through interest-based negotiation.
The Result: Procurement realizes its full strategic potential. Instead of delivering only operational savings, it acts as a proactive architect of the value chain. Your teams not only secure short-term advantages but also build long-term, high-value partnerships that strengthen the resilience of your enterprise.
Strategic Realignment
The Challenge: Your analytically sound strategy fails to gain traction, stalled by a passive resistance that counters formal agreement with silent inaction.
My Contribution: We do not just analyze the situation; we intervene. In confidential dialogues, we make the unspoken interests and fears that fuel passive resistance visible and negotiable. We acknowledge the hidden, non-monetary currencies at play. By addressing foundational needs like status, security, and autonomy, we establish a playing field where cooperation becomes the rational choice.
The Result: The strategic deadlock dissolves. By acknowledging and surfacing the hidden interests, a space emerges where progress becomes possible because cooperation is now the rational choice for everyone involved.
Negotiation as a Strategic Operating System
In a complex environment, attempting to control the future with a detailed plan is an act of futility. The dynamics of reality will outpace any meticulous planning. The energy invested in defending the plan is unavailable for the precise observation of reality and for effective engagement with it. The decisive competence is the ability to understand and lead the organization itself as a system of negotiations.
Our collaboration is a sparring process in which we apply the fundamental principles of successful negotiation to your strategic challenge. The goal is a superior grasp of the underlying dynamics and the ability to identify and execute the next effective move.
An Engagement
Our collaboration unfolds as a disciplined, adaptive cycle that continuously generates orientation and identifies the next effective step.
Clarify Intent: Frame the Engagement. We start with the crucial question: What is the strategic intent? Together, we peel away the layers to reveal the core objective behind the apparent problem. This clarified frame serves as a compass for all subsequent steps and prevents us from getting lost in tactical details.
Sharpen the Picture: Read the Terrain. We create a multi-dimensional picture of the landscape that goes beyond mere facts. We map the key actors, their hidden interests, the unwritten rules, and the prevailing narratives that govern behavior within the system. The goal is a shared, unvarnished view of reality.
Design Options: Shape the Playing Field. Based on the sharpened picture, we develop courses of action. Instead of merely reacting to the existing playing field, we actively shape it. We look for creative ways to break deadlocks and generate new potentials where previously only irreconcilable positions were visible.
Dare to Intervene: Probe Reality. We define the smallest possible, precise intervention to probe the system and gain maximum insight. The goal is not the immediate, grand solution, but a smart experiment: a targeted move or a calibrated question that validates critical assumptions and reveals the system's hidden physics.
Synchronize and Act: Set the Next Move. We analyze the system's response to the intervention and synchronize the insights with the strategic intent. This sharpened orientation leads to the decisive question: What is the consequence? What is now the next effective move? The cycle begins anew, at a higher level of clarity.
A Conceptualized Example
The Situation: The CEO of a retail company faces a pivotal decision: joining an international procurement alliance. The debate in the boardroom is deadlocked. The CPO pushes for the alliance to secure competitiveness. The COO warns of the massive disruption to nationally optimized processes. Each side has valid arguments and negotiates from irreconcilable positions.
The Intervention: The sparring process reframes the situation: as an internal high-stakes negotiation where real interests, such as security, autonomy, and status, lie behind the functional positions. Instead of another analysis, we design a targeted intervention: a key project is piloted with a potential alliance partner. The experiment serves to dissolve the rigid positions by providing real data on the central points of contention: What are the actual friction losses? How adaptable is our own culture?
The Result: The result is a breakthrough. The debate shifts from subjective opinions to objective observations. By acknowledging the legitimate but previously hidden interests of both the CPO and COO, specifically the tension between process security and competitiveness, and making them visible, a moment of shared insight emerges. The entrenched positions dissolve because the concerns of both sides are now understood as part of a shared reality. This new foundation breaks the deadlock. The CEO has not only found a solution to the alliance question but has also strengthened his leadership team's ability to resolve future conflicts based on interests rather than positions.
The Capable Organization
My work aims to strengthen your sovereignty as a decision-maker, not your dependence on me. In our dialogue, I provide the tools and the mental models for you to master the art of precise orientation and effective intervention yourself.
The overarching goal is to cultivate your organization's ability to prevail in its market over the long term. To shape your own development with sovereignty means to use uncertainty as a strategic advantage for sustained success.
Your Advisor
My name is Patrick Riedl. I create the necessary orientation for decision-makers to maintain the initiative in high-stakes situations amidst conflicting data.
My methodology is built on the principles of strategic negotiation. This approach has proven itself in the establishment and management of strategic retail alliances and in international negotiations with transaction volumes in the hundreds of millions, an arena where every decision has unsparing consequences.
Collaboration starts with a confidential dialogue. Its purpose is to determine if there is a precise fit between your challenge and my approach.