Run the Team Operating Cadence

Flow · 7 controlled steps

1. 01

   Design the cadence system

   Match recurring mechanisms to the team’s natural work and decision cycles.

   • — Inventory existing meetings, asynchronous updates, shift handoffs, reviews, dashboards, and informal coordination.
   • — Map recurring planning, coordination, decision, customer, risk, learning, feedback, and improvement needs by horizon.
   • — Define the smallest useful set of events and asynchronous mechanisms and remove duplication.
   • — Set purpose, participants, frequency or trigger, preparation, facilitator, decision authority, outputs, records, and cancellation rules.

   Responsible

   Manager

   Output

   Team Cadence Architecture

   Decision

   Does every cadence element perform necessary operating work at the right rhythm?

2. 02

   Prepare the operating state

   Make current evidence available before synchronous attention is consumed.

   • — Update agreed work, outcome, flow, quality, capacity, dependency, risk, decision, action, and guardrail evidence at its source.
   • — Identify changes, exceptions, conflicts, blocked work, decisions needed, and items suitable for asynchronous closure.
   • — Invite participant agenda items with the decision or help needed.
   • — Route urgent and specialist matters immediately rather than waiting.

   Responsible

   Cadence owner and work owners

   Output

   Team Operating State · Decision-focused agenda

3. 03

   Orient to outcomes and priorities

   Create shared situational awareness without turning the event into serial status narration.

   • — Confirm purpose, intended outcomes, current priorities, material changes, and time horizon.
   • — Review only meaningful movement, variance, uncertainty, and guardrail signals.
   • — Surface conflicting demands and assumptions and distinguish fact, interpretation, and forecast.
   • — Move detailed problem-solving to the smallest qualified group where appropriate.

   Responsible

   Cadence owner

   Output

   Shared Current-State View

   Decision

   What changed enough to require coordination, decision, support, or escalation?

4. 04

   Coordinate work and dependencies

   Protect flow across people, disciplines, systems, shifts, and connected processes.

   • — Review near-term commitments, capacity, constraints, queues, dependencies, handoffs, and resource conflicts.
   • — Confirm what will continue, stop, start, change, or wait and the effect on customers and connected teams.
   • — Assign dependency owners and receiving-owner acknowledgements.
   • — Keep detailed task administration in its source workflow rather than duplicating it in meeting notes.

   Responsible

   Manager and work owners

   Output

   Coordinated Work Commitments

   Decision

   Which coordination changes are necessary to protect the most important flow?

5. 05

   Make decisions and escalate constraints

   Move issues through explicit authority instead of allowing repeated discussion.

   • — State the decision, evidence, options, constraints, affected parties, urgency, and recommended owner.
   • — Use the chartered decision method and record outcome, rationale, dissent, conditions, and review trigger.
   • — Escalate beyond-authority matters with minimum sufficient context, requested decision, fallback, and response need.
   • — Route governed safety, quality, privacy, security, conduct, employment, or other specialist matters to qualified processes.

   Responsible

   Named decision owner

   Output

   Team Decision Record · Escalation Handoff

   Decision

   Can this decision be made here with sufficient evidence and authority?

6. 06

   Close commitments and communicate

   Translate the cadence event into one authoritative operating state.

   • — Confirm decisions, changed priorities, commitments, owners, timing, dependencies, risks, and escalations.
   • — Update source workflows and records rather than creating a competing shadow list.
   • — Communicate changes to absent participants and affected upstream and downstream owners.
   • — Invite factual correction and confirm the next trigger or cadence point.

   Responsible

   Cadence owner

   Output

   Updated Team Operating State · Connection Notices

7. 07

   Review and improve the cadence

   Keep recurring mechanisms useful as work and context change.

   • — Review decision flow, commitment reliability, dependency resolution, participation, preparation, load, duplication, accessibility, and guardrails.
   • — Seek participant and connected-owner evidence about value and missing mechanisms.
   • — Distinguish cadence design, manager practice, authority, capacity, process, system, and organization causes.
   • — Change frequency, purpose, participation, evidence, facilitation, or asynchronous design prospectively and retire low-value elements.

   Responsible

   Manager

   Output

   Cadence Health Review · Updated Team Cadence Architecture

   Decision

   What change would improve operating value relative to attention cost?

Connections

Seams · 12 hops within 2 steps

Upstream and downstream neighbourhood over public reference processes only. Each hop shows the trigger, carried objects, and what the receiving process loses if the producing step is skipped.

Roles

Systems + Data

Measures

Evidence + judgment

Draft reference standard. Requires client context and qualified employment, labor, accessibility, safety, quality, privacy, security, conduct, data, regulatory, and jurisdiction-specific review before deployment.