To change, we need patterns of structure and planning - a cone of possibility toward initiatives that align with the changing values and goals of exponential change.
With decades of project, program, and initiative management, Pattern and Flow works with schedules, roadmaps, and prioritizing algorithms. At the same time, through this scaffolding run informal networks where information flows in ways we have not been able to measure. Recognizing and appreciating these networks is essential to the current reality of ongoing becoming in an increasingly changing world.
As we adapt to AI, these human networks can define and enhance your AI and related technologies. The people in your organization have the information needed and can provide gates of ideation and imagination as well as validation and approval.
Let us help the people in your organization to realize the potential in information they already have and find new ways to reach your organizational goals.
Organizations are not machines to be optimized. They are systems of interrelated living systems, each of whom brings history, relationships, and very human ways of knowing. Together, the accumulated knowledge of these people is what makes organizations work.
Pattern and Flow combines traditional planning and strategy with formal complexity frameworks and the practical experience of managing large-scale programs and initiatives to help you see both dimensions.
Discover our services
Single Engagement Model
Pre-work: Stakeholder interviews, problem framing assessment
2-day intensive facilitation using warm data protocols
Post-work: Documentation and sense-making synthesis
Optional: Follow-up sessions at 30/60/90 days
Multi-Engagement Model
Monthly facilitation sessions
Between-session support for emerging dynamics
Capacity building for internal facilitators
Documentation of patterns and insights
Is integration destroying what made your acquisition valuable? Transformation initiatives dying after translation into portfolio items? Performance systems that can't recognize the work that matters?
We help you see what your current systems prevent you from seeing.
What we offer:
Cynefin-based diagnostic: Which problems are you treating as ordered when they're complex?
Warm data labs with leadership teams to surface relational context erased by reporting requirements
System design that enables distributed decision-making without prescribing outcomes
Engagement: 2-4 week diagnostic or 3-6 month facilitated inquiry Investment: $15K-100K depending on scope
Core Talk: "When Planning Becomes Violence"
Organizational synchronization as power move
How optimization eliminates emergence
Alternative approaches for complex domains
60-90 minute keynote format
Workshop: "Complexity Methods for Practitioners"
Cynefin framework application
Warm data practice introduction
Wicked problem recognition
Half-day or full-day format
Training: "Designing Systems for Emergence"
Governance frameworks enabling distributed decision-making
Information architecture preserving context
Decision protocols for uncertainty
2-day intensive format
Bi-weekly 90-minute sessions
Pattern recognition for where interventions have become constraints
Epistemological supervision (borrowed from clinical supervision model)
Support for holding uncertainty without premature resolution
Access to between-session support for acute decision points
Focus Areas:
Recognizing when you can't see the system because you're trying to control it
Navigating gap between theoretical understanding and enacted practice
Working with emergence when organizational structures demand prediction
Maintaining epistemological honesty under pressure for certainty
What makes Pattern & Flow different?
Most consultants sell certainty. We acknowledge we're caught inside the systems we're trying to help you see.
Our positioning:
15+ years delivering transformation outcomes ($650K documented cost savings, successful merger navigation)
Certified in warm data facilitation, Cynefin sense-making, wicked problem solving
Currently pursuing advanced study in systems science—not because we lack methods, but because practicing them revealed questions certification alone can't answer
What this means for you: You get someone who bridges academic theory and delivered results. Who won't pretend to stand outside the complexity. Who models what it looks like to practice systems thinking while caught inside systems.
We work with:
Organizations post-merger/acquisition experiencing emergence loss
Transformation leaders whose methods suddenly stopped working
Mission-driven organizations facing fundamental strategic uncertainty
Technology companies where rapid scaling is breaking informal coordination
Erika Sajdak is a complexity consultant and the founder of Pattern & Flow LLC, a practice based in Portland, Oregon that works with C-suite executives and organizational leaders. Her approach is grounded in complexity science frameworks, particularly Dave Snowden's Cynefin methodology and Nora Bateson's warm data approaches, helping organizations navigate uncertainty and transformation.
She came to this work after 17 years in educational technology leadership at NWEA (later acquired by HMH), where she managed teams through multiple M&A transitions and led strategic initiatives including PMO operations and multi-million dollar programs. That experience gave her a deep understanding of how organizations struggle when they try to apply mechanistic thinking to complex, living systems.
Intellectually, Erika is deeply engaged with living systems thinking and the tension between sovereignty and belonging - she's writing a nonfiction book called "Separate and Part Of" that explores this through complexity science. She also has a speculative fiction novel in progress. Her philosophical background includes a degree in philosophy with significant engagement with Spinoza's work, and she's exploring doctoral studies in Systems Science at Portland State University, with research interests in neurodivergent workplace systems.
Her consulting work focuses on moving organizations away from industrial metaphors toward ecological, relational frameworks. She's developed workshops like "When Your Strategic Plan Meets Reality" and "The Language We Think In" for organizations stuck in strategic planning paralysis. She's also developing a podcast concept called "In Formation" that examines how organizations are always in the process of becoming while simultaneously arranging themselves into constraining patterns.
What stands out about Erika is how she bridges theory and practice - drawing on thinkers like Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Judith Pintar, and adrienne maree brown while creating practical frameworks for organizational transformation. She values connection, curiosity, and being transformed by new ideas, which she describes as pillars in her recent rebirth.
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