Establish your business cadence
Establishing a business cadence refers to creating a rhythmic flow of activities, meetings, and processes to ensure the consistent, timely execution of your strategy. It's a structured approach to reviewing progress on strategic goals and OKRs, gathering inputs internally and externally, running strategy meetings, adapting strategy and communicating strategic priorities through your business.
Establishing a business cadence and sticking to it will support you to build a culture of accountability and discipline that is essential for successful strategy implementation. This is an area of weakness in most businesses and is the key reason most strategic plans don’t get implemented.
The benefits of these are outlined below.
Efficiency
By having an agreed business cadence for strategy implementation, you can streamline the planning and execution process. These critical strategy sessions will be in everyone's diaries for the year(s) ahead. There will be no excuse for any leader not being available. This efficiency reduces the time and effort required to coordinate meetings with multiple calendars and conflicting priorities of team members.
Accountability
A structured cadence includes regular check-ins, OKR updates, feedback, and strategy review. The individual ‘owner’ of an OKR or Kanban ticket is required to update the team on the progress. This creates a culture of accountability, where individuals and teams are responsible for delivering on strategic goals and objectives.
Focus
The consistency that comes with sticking to the cadence ensures that strategy remains a top priority and is not neglected in the face of daily operational tasks. Regular strategy reviews enable you to identify and address risks and issues early. This proactive approach minimises the likelihood of strategic failures.
Adaptability
Regular strategy reviews ensure timely adjustments and adaptations. If market conditions change or unforeseen challenges arise, your business can pivot and respond. This proactive approach minimises the likelihood of strategic failures.
Transparency
Sticking to your business cadence enhances transparency, allowing leaders to share strategic priorities, progress on OKR, and challenges they are coming up against. This transparency builds trust and accountability. While we have ‘owners’ for objectives and goals the overall accountability for implementing strategy must be shared by all leaders.
Engagement
All your employees will be more engaged when they see that the business is committed to its strategic vision. A structured cadence provides opportunities for employees to contribute their ideas and insights.
Strategic cadence
Overall, establishing your business cadence helps you maintain a disciplined approach to strategy execution. It ensures that strategic plans are not simply documents sitting on a shelf but are alive and guiding actions and decisions. By regularly revisiting and adapting the strategy, your business remains agile, responsive, and focused on achieving your long-term goals.
📚Strategic cadence learning
It's important to understand why a strategic cadence is critical to successfully implement your business strategy.
Review this comprehensive learning package on strategic cadence, why its important, and what activities make up the cadence.
Barriers To implementing strategy