Running the Operating Cadence
Designing the Weekly Operating Cadence
The operating cadence is the heartbeat of an executive team. A practical template for what to run weekly, monthly, and quarterly, and what to cut.
Why cadence beats heroics
Teams do not stay aligned through one great offsite; they stay aligned through a predictable rhythm of short, well-prepared checkpoints. The Chief of Staff owns that rhythm end to end.
A default template
Start from this baseline and prune aggressively.
- Weekly, 60 minutes: leadership team meeting focused on decisions and blockers, not status. Status goes in a written pre-read.
- Weekly, 30 minutes: 1:1 between the CoS and the principal to review priorities, open decisions, and the follow-up list.
- Monthly, 90 minutes: business review against the metrics that matter, with owners presenting variances and corrective actions.
- Quarterly, half day or more: planning and retrospective, where priorities are reset and stale initiatives are killed explicitly.
The pre-read discipline
Every recurring meeting needs a written pre-read sent at least 24 hours ahead. The meeting then spends its time on the disagreements and decisions the pre-read surfaced. If a meeting can be fully replaced by its pre-read, cancel the meeting.
Auditing the cadence
Once a quarter, list every recurring meeting, its cost in person-hours, and the last decision it produced. Anything that has not produced a decision or unblocked work in two cycles gets merged, shortened, or cut.