Operating Cadence

Reach for this when the calendar is full of meetings but the company still feels unplanned — direction gets re-litigated in status updates, quarters start without goals, and follow-up routes through the founder. The fix is not more meetings; it is giving planning, review and accountability each a home so the rest of the calendar can be left alone.

The quarter turn

The busiest stretch is the two weeks before a new quarter. Here is a worked example — the reference is a company of about 40 people. The C-level goes offsite two weeks out to review OKRs, strategy and SWOT, then drafts company OKRs. Management runs its own strategy meetings and writes team OKRs against the draft. The C-level approves company and team OKRs a few days before the line, and the results plus new OKRs are communicated to the whole company just before the quarter starts. From there, a check-in with the management team every two weeks keeps the accountability loop running.

Give every meeting a job

A cadence only works if each recurring meeting has one job — and everyone knows what it is not for. Planning sets goals; review checks them against reality; the accountability check-in renews commitments; the all-hands communicates. The moment a status update starts re-litigating strategy, the meeting has lost its job and the cadence starts leaking.

Note the two levels. Company-level meetings — quarterly planning, the review, the all-hands — belong to the operating system and survive any one person's calendar. Founder-level meetings — your 1:1s, your deep-work blocks, your own strategy time — belong to your job description. Design both on purpose; a company rhythm that works by consuming the founder's calendar is not working.