Leadership Advantage - Issue 17

by Andrea Michalek

Hi Leaders,

You don’t need more time, you need better rhythm.

Your product team has all the necessary meetings, and yet you’re always scrambling.

1:1 meetings only happen when you can find the time.

Strategic thinking gets pushed aside by urgent requests.

You’re shipping, sure. But it feels chaotic and disconnected from the customer. And deep down, you know there’s a better way.

Last week, we talked about scaling yourself through better delegation.

But here’s the truth: scaling only works when your team has the right operating rhythm.

That’s what we’re tackling this week.

You’ve probably implemented daily stand-ups, sprint cycles, and quarterly planning.

But here’s what I’ve learned:

Knowing how to create rhythm and understanding why it matters are completely different things.

The best leaders don’t just follow a playbook.

They understand the deeper purpose behind each rhythm. And they focus on the right conversations at the right time to accelerate everything.

The PACE Framework for Team Rhythm

Most productivity advice focuses on individuals.

But setting an operating rhythm optimizes your team.

Here are the core principles to design your team’s rhythm:

Purposeful outcomes - define success for each cycle

Async-first communication - write for updates, meet for decisions

Customer connected - every rhythm should connect to customer value

Escalation boundaries - Big issues get separate meetings. Don’t let big issues hijack short meetings

When you apply PACE consistently, you transform scattered activity into coordinated momentum.

Daily Rhythm: Energy Management and Deep Work Protection

Focusing on daily activities is important.

But not for the reason most leaders think.

The magic of daily rhythm isn’t about status updates.

It’s about creating a feedback loop so tight that small course corrections prevent major derailments.

When the team knows what each person accomplished yesterday and what they’re tackling today, they can spot misalignment and blocked progress before it compounds.

Daily focus also creates psychological momentum.

Progress becomes visible.
Wins get celebrated immediately.
Problems get solved before they fester.

This tight feedback loop turns daily work into sustained momentum.

But momentum isn’t just about frequency, it’s about timing.

Here’s what most teams do wrong: they treat all hours as equal.

Implementation tips:

Your team’s mental energy peaks in the morning and declines after lunch.

Batch meetings into a 2-hour window to protect peak energy for your most challenging work.
As teams grow, consider moving to daily status updates that happen asynchronously.

Then, daily stand-ups can focus only on blockers that require real-time discussion.

I was hesitant when my team suggested Slack for daily updates. I thought it would be something that no one ever read.

But, 3 good things happened when we created a Slack channel for this:

We had a simple history that anyone could refer back to if they were out for the day
The team all appreciated not having to listen to updates
Real issues that deserved to be communicated surfaced more often

Copy this Slack template for async updates:

Yesterday: Shipped user onboarding flow v2

Today: Starting checkout optimization research

Blockers: Need design review from Maya

Weekly (or Bi-Weekly): Team Optimization and Momentum

Weekly cycles are where individual work becomes coordinated team effort, and where most leaders underestimate the real power.

Two-week sprints create predictable recalibration windows.

Engineers surface dependencies, product managers share user feedback, designers reveal insights.

This rhythm allows meaningful progress while keeping coordination manageable.

Key reminder:

Weekly rhythms are not just about delivery.
Match your customer discovery rhythm to your delivery rhythm.

Weekly interviews and prototyping keep you grounded in real user needs.

Why This Foundation Matters

Here’s the counterintuitive truth: rhythm creates speed, not slowness.

When your team knows exactly when important conversations happen, they stop interrupting each other with urgent-feeling questions that could wait until the next scheduled sync.

24% of developers think improving collaboration would improve their job satisfaction. (GitLab’s 2025 Global DevSecOps Report, n=5,000+ responses).

Lack of an operating rhythm selects against your best people.

High performers crave clarity and predictable excellence.

They want to know when decisions get made, when feedback arrives, and when priorities shift.

When rhythm is broken, these people either become interrupt-driven firefighters or they leave for better environments.

“After only 20 minutes of interrupted performance, people reported significantly higher stress, frustration, workload, effort, and pressure.” (UC Irvine, Gloria Mark, 2008).

This is how you solve the chaos we started with: intentional daily and weekly rhythms that fit your team’s unique challenges.

Put Rhythms in Action: My Challenge to You

Pick one daily or weekly rhythm that’s currently broken for your team:

Maybe it’s streamlining daily stand-ups to handle async updates
Maybe it’s asking your team to each block 90 uninterrupted minutes of deep work on their calendar every day
Maybe it’s faster decision-making in weekly planning

Start there.

Design around outcomes, not process.

Going Deeper on Operating Rhythm

If you want personalized help diagnosing what's broken in your rhythms, I'm opening 5 slots this week for 30-minute Operating Rhythm Diagnostic calls specifically for product and engineering leaders.

We'll map your cycles, identify gaps, and design one specific change that eliminates your biggest coordination frustration.

These aren’t generic coaching calls. They’re focused diagnostic sessions for leaders who want to transform chaotic execution into predictable momentum.

Next week: How to turn tactical momentum into strategic business impact.

Hit reply with either your rhythm challenge or to claim a diagnostic slot.

I read everything.

Cheers!
Andrea

Andrea Michalek - @ThatAndreaM
Say hi 👋 on Twitter, Bluesky, or LinkedIn

☎️ Book a 1:1 call with me