Read Time: 3 minutes
I’ve seen a lot of live music.
What separates a good concert from a great one isn’t the light show. It isn’t the venue. It’s not even the crowd.
It’s the pacing. The rhythm. The use of tension and release.
And it happens at different levels:
Within a song, silence is just as important as the notes played.
Song selection, carefully picking a slow song to set up a high-energy favorite creates a contrast that makes the latter feel bigger.
Even the tour, tends to favor weekends over weeknights and move just far enough away that this is our one chance to be a part of it.
In many ways, you’re no different than your favorite band.
Your team needs a heartbeat. A rhythm. A careful pacing that feels musical.
You can let it unfold organically or create it with more intention. And you know my vote. What if I could make it easy on you?
Let’s spend 3 minutes and set a Minimum Viable Cadence.
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Map the Setlist
The equivalent of the song selection for a team are the key interactions.
What do I mean by "key interactions"?
Providing Care
Sharing Context
Solving Problems
Making Decisions
Discussing Feedback
Communicating Information
Reinforcing Culture / Behaviors
Offering Coaching & Development
These are my starting point. You will probably have others.
The key is identifying 7-10 most common interactions so we can ensure they happen well.
Play The Songs
For each key interaction, you need to know how they’re covered.
Meetings, methods, and channels. These are your instruments. Your power trio.
Meetings
1:1 check-in
Team meeting
Retrospective
All-hands
As-needed
Methods
In-person
Memos
Proposals
Slide decks
Channels
Email
Slack/Teams
Text/WhatsApp
Team Wiki/Notion
Again, customize this list for your reality.
The key is deciding two things for each interaction:
Can this interaction be handled asynchronously, or does it require a meeting? If it can be done without a meeting, do it. No one has ever quite a team because they had too few meetings.
When is that interaction considered “done?” This is essential for global or remote teams where the rule is often, "If it's not written, it never happened."
Add Some Flourish
4 final considerations as you set this up.
Add sparingly. If you can get it done in a one-off meeting, get it done. Resist making it recurring. Once you add a piece, removing it can be extremely hard. If your goal is to move fast, then your best method is to empower your team broadly so you can meet less.
Play small rooms. Less is more when it comes to attendees, too. But you're right to worry about people being left out. Just add an AI transcript tool and make sure they get access. They'll get what they need in a fraction of the time. Try Fireflies, Fathom or Otter.
Don’t be afraid to improvise. The chance you nail all of this early is low. Don't be afraid to adjust as you learn what your team needs. You can shift frequency, method, attendees, etc.
Match the company rhythm. Every company has its own pace. 6 weeks of software development sprints. Black Friday blitz. Quarterly accounting. Annual budgets, reviews, etc. It's important to acknowledge them rather than get surprised by them.
Don’t Forget To Play The Classics
Can you take minimum viable too far? Yes.
At the end of the day, we're social creatures. So even the most introverted of us who prefer the convenience of remote work need a connection. Let's not have meetings to have meetings, but let's have the ones we need to be a team.
I'd be hard-pressed not to have:
1:1s with my direct reports (weekly/bi-weekly)
Group problem-solving / feedback sessions (monthly / aligned to work)
Some sort of all-hands that brings the team together (quarter or 2x/year)
If you want to cut through, just set up those three plus any core working sessions necessary to you need to keep your operations humming along.
Then listen.
Your team's performance will tell you if they need more meetings.
Thank you for reading. Appreciate you!
Dave
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