Take Your Pulse: How Rhythms of the Business Create Order in Hybrid Chaos

Let's Get (Less) Physical

Most hybrid work debates center on physical presence schedules, i.e., on which specific days employees should be in a given location. But they miss a more fundamental question.

No matter where you are physically or when you're in any location, what truly matters is having a clear understanding of your organization's operational cadence: the “rhythm of the business” that determines when major recurring meetings, decisions, culture events, talent programs, and financial processes take place.

While researching for this article, I was delighted to find that my friend ​Elliot Felix​ nailed the idea in Workplaces Magazine:

"Without the default setting of 'everyone in the office 9 to 5', organizations need to...proactively coordinate activities and set the rhythm of the business...These are the attributes of an effective, inspiring organization."

And that was back in 2018.

Timelines and Terminology

The concept of "operating cadence" originated from ​Six Sigma​ in the 1980s to reduce variability in manufacturing. Rodney Evans also cited a military connection on the “At Work with The Ready” ​podcast​:

“I learned about operating rhythms from people who had been in the military at my former job…it is the heartbeat of a team, and if you don't have these routines that are really held dear and protected at any cost, you can't ever perform as a group.”

In the early 2000s, the rise of ​Agile development​ introduced a faster, more adaptable cycle of work in sprints. Agile creates a more 'rhythm' feel for work—a natural flow and pattern, like a pulse that sustains the organization consistently over time.

Cadence provides structure; rhythm creates feeling. The most effective organizations master predictable cadence (productivity) and organic rhythm (engagement) together.

“Rhythm of the business” means synchronizing across the organization instead of a single project or development processes.

When Rhythms Stay Hidden

Execs know when board presentations happen, when strategic planning kicks off in August, and when budgets must be finalized.

But this knowledge rarely filters down effectively to middle managers, junior employees, and new hires, the people whose individual activities and improvement ideas should be informed by these larger rhythms.

Leaders, you are responsible for providing extra transparency, especially in modern distributed work environments where colleagues no longer naturally absorb these patterns through physical proximity.

Transparency and Technology: The Hybrid Imperative

Historically, companies published major business activities on static intranet sites that quickly became outdated. Today's technologies make it exponentially easier to maintain and access company-wide handbooks and cadences, enabling organizations to create living repositories that employees can query in natural language.

This technological advancement is essential because hybrid work exponentially increases coordination challenges. When we worked side-by-side, many rhythms were understood organically. Junior employees could overhear colleagues mentioning the monthly sales review or notice everyone preparing board presentation slides on the same day. Agile teams prefer short daily standups and predictable sprints because they reduce cognitive burden.

Distributed teams lack these incidental cues, so establishing transparent, accessible business rhythms becomes a critical bridge between physical and digital collaboration. Without deliberate attention to these patterns, the coordination costs of hybrid work quickly outweigh its flexibility benefits.

And speaking of coordination costs...

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Sharing Rhythms Across Functions

Why shouldn't Engineering see Marketing's rhythms to time product releases? Companies like ​GitLab​ share cadence information publicly across organizational boundaries, enabling teams to coordinate without surprises and eliminating extra work.

At McKinsey, presenting to various practice groups meant hunting down each team's meeting schedule individually, requiring endless emails and coordination calls just to find optimal timing. A central list of community learning meetings would have eliminated this inefficiency.

During recent interviews with a financial services client, I heard design team members say that a lack of cross-team visibility of when major project meetings took place…wait for it…created even more meetings.

Aligning Inputs and Outputs

Once you have identified the most critical rhythms (e.g., recurring meetings) in your organization, the next step is demonstrating how they connect with each other.

​Kelly Moran​, VP of Experience Research at global experience design consultancy ​geniant​, told me that:

“Leaders must clearly communicate inputs and outputs to clarify what information and/or decisions feed into each meeting and on to the next. This helps inform agendas, attendees, and actions for the next day."

geniant's weekly leadership meetings exemplify effective information sequencing: strategic sales discussions lead to resource planning and eventually financial forecasting.

This thoughtful ordering ensures decision-making flows efficiently through the organization, creating clarity for team members who can align their  schedules and activities with the company's operational heartbeat.

Take Action: Find Your Timeline

The path forward is clear: document, publish, and make searchable as many aspects of your organization's operating cadence as possible.

Start by auditing the rhythms in your organization:

• Map your critical periodic activities – identify strategic, operational, and financial meetings or decisions that recur daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually
• Trace information flows between events – document how outputs from one rhythm become inputs for another, highlighting dependencies and potential bottlenecks
• Survey employees' awareness gaps – ask teams what company rhythms consistently surprise them or for which ones they need greater visibility

Then, optimize your approach:

• Engage fresh perspectives – involve junior staff who can identify opaque processes that veterans take for granted
• Create clear boundaries – establish rhythm guidelines while allowing flexibility at the margins so employees can plan autonomous work effectively

Modern work demands clarity about both ​WHERE​ work happens digitally and WHEN it happens rhythmically. Only by mastering both can your organization not sound like a broken record about hybrid work.

Have you encountered situations where unclear organizational rhythms created confusion or missed opportunities? Would your team benefit from making these cadences more transparent? Having advised organizations across industries on creating effective business rhythms, I've seen firsthand how the right cadence can transform coordination in hybrid environments.

- Phil

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