It's essential for all organizations to coordinate teams across various departments to achieve strategic objectives. This calls for integrating planning with execution, ensuring efficient communication among teams, and directing everyone's focus in the organization. A flexible and coordinated model is necessary to monitor progress reliably, evaluate outcomes, and make timely adjustments using the most current data.

Over the years, Nextant has helped multiple customers from Fortune 10 organizations to mid-size organizations implement effective Rhythms of Business that attack this goal and ultimately unlock success and productivity across the organization.

What is the Rhythm of Business (RoB)?

An organization’s Rhythm of Business (RoB) defines the cadence and sequence of key business planning processes, review meetings and regular team checkpoints. It aligns everything from strategy definition venues to tactical project updates to ensure strategic goals are cascaded and coordinated across teams at different levels in the organization on an ongoing way.

What should I consider when establishing a successful RoB structure?

There are many items that can make an RoB structure successful, but 3 main components that you should always consider are the following:

Clear and connected business cadence:

Ensuring that all critical topics are discussed by all relevant stakeholders, including different teams and different levels of the organization in a coordinated way is the first key element. The goal here is to ensure that an individual contributor with an entry level role is receiving the information they need for their job in a way that is aligned with strategic decisions being made by the company’s leadership team.

There is a lot of value that can be generated by sequencing meetings in the right order and ensuring the right frequency. Cadences that are spaced too far apart generate loss in traction when executing and cadences that are too close to each other generate inefficiency. Additionally, having the right people in the right meeting and ensuring that agendas contain the right level of information is part of a clear map of checkpoints. The sequencing and cadence also need to consider key organizational processes, such as key moments during a financial cycles, sales cycles and product release cycles. The outcome of this first element should be a model in which all team meetings and leadership meetings operate together in a connected way with relevant information flowing from one venue to another in a seamless way.

Structured workback plans for each venue:

Each meeting will require different types of data and information to make it productive. It will also require ensuring that the right attendees are indeed in the meeting and are prepared to have a productive discussion, in some cases requiring review of key information in advance of the meeting. This need calls for having a clear workback plan to each meeting. The workback plan does not need to be complicated but should be a simple checklist where everyone joining the meeting knows that it will be productive. In turn this will generate engagement during the meeting and lead to productive conversations that result in informed decision making. At the end you want meetings that generate meeting traction and not meetings that are held for the sake of holding a meeting. It all starts with clear workback plans leading into each meeting. Generate this culture in your organization and consider implementing a consistent way of generating and tracking these checklists through templates, a system or simple tool and your set up for success. Always designate someone who is on point to run the checklist and ensure everything is ready as planned.

Documenting decisions and driving actions:

Some organizations suffer from decisions that are not well documented and actions that are not executed. These symptoms typically result in organizations that often go back to the same topics and get easily trapped in the same topics repeatedly. It also leads to frustration in stakeholders as discussions don’t always end up leading to the expected business impact.  Establishing a way to document and track decisions as well as action items ensures that meetings are having an actual impact. Having a person in each team that can help drive actions and a single place where everything is recorded, and track is also an excellent way to do this efficiently.

Nextant's Approach: Streamlining Operations and Adding Value

Nextant has successfully implemented structured RoB models into our client engagements. This includes managing different RoB venues focused on subjects like product development, sales initiatives, marketing and new financial results. Through our structured methodology we help design successful RoB models that consider our key success factors mentioned in this article while using modern Microsoft technologies like Power BI, Copilot, Teams, PowerApps and Power Automate to facilitate these processes in an effective way. We also help clients run and execute key elements of their RoB in some cases to ensure that the RoB actually operates in an ongoing way as designed.

We develop a detailed checklist that helps complete key activities prior to a meeting, during the meeting and after the meeting. Examples of these activities include ensuring that all the required information is ready and has been made available to all participants, that all agenda items in a meeting are appropriately covered and that action items are captured and are executed after the meeting has happened.

Conclusion: Partnering for Operational Excellence

In conclusion, Nextant has the experience to unlock the power of structured Rhythm of Business in driving operational excellence and client satisfaction. Whether it is designin a net new RoB model for an entire organization or a specific team, optimizing call schedules, supporting complex projects, or enhancing communication strategies, our dedicated team stands ready to elevate your business performance.

For more information on how Nextant can transform your business operations, contact us today. Discover how our structured approach and commitment to adding value can propel your organization forward in today's competitive landscape. Trust Nextant to orchestrate your business rhythm and unlock your full potential.