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The Operating Rhythm of Great Companies
Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly systems that actually drive clarity, without an onslaught of never-ending meetings.
Regina Gerbeaux
August 10, 2025 • Reading Time: 12 minutes
Hi! Welcome to another issue of Force Multipliers, your weekly briefing from Regina Gerbeaux, where Silicon Valley's behind-the-scenes operators get battle-tested frameworks for their toughest challenges, from putting out chaotic fires to managing strong personalities.
I once worked with a company that had so many meetings, their entire Mondays were shot.
It was assumed that in this nearly 100-person company, no one would get anything remotely productive done ever on that day.
The team had onslaughts of back-to-back meetings, starting at 8am, barely with a pause for lunch in the afternoon, and went all the way into the late afternoon.
These were all internal meetings too, which frustrated me to my core.
(It frustrated the CEO too, but he didn’t think he had a choice. A foreshadow on today’s topic: he was wrong.)
There was no time for engineers to ship any meaningful code or do PR reviews.
No time for sales teams to talk to potential customers.
No time for CS teams to respond to customers in a timely manner, which pissed users off.
No time for the CEO to take calls with investors, customers, advisors, or anyone else.
The worst part was everyone was burned out, and no one thought this was a good use of time. But no one said anything.
In that session, I remember telling the CEO: “Why don’t you just wipe out the meetings?”
“I can’t,” he said. “They’re all important.”
“…are they really?”
With his EA, we went through the calendar together. As the main person with a strong pulse on the entire company, his EA was quick to tell him which meetings were redundant, which were no longer useful, and which needed strong improvements to make it worth everyone’s time.
In the end, I think there were about 2-3 meetings left on Mondays. Everything else got canceled or moved async. It felt like a miracle.
Here's what I see happen all the time: companies grow from 5 people to 50 people, and suddenly everyone's calendar is packed with meetings. People complain they can't get any "real work" done because they're always in some sync, standup, or status update.
This is Meeting Theater: when meetings become performative displays of "work" rather than actual work getting done. These meetings exist mostly to show that people are busy, but they don't drive meaningful outcomes or decisions.
The best companies I've worked with have operating rhythms that actually serve their teams. They create clarity, drive decisions, and get out of the way so people can do their jobs. Most importantly, they're designed around what the company actually needs - not what some business school textbook says you should do.
Meetings are a necessary evil to keep everyone on the same page, especially as the company grows. But they don’t have to be bureaucratic nonsense that everyone dreads. Today, I’m going to show you what the operating rhythm is in the best companies out there.
The Operating Rhythm of Successful Companies
🪨 The Foundation: Every Meeting Needs Pre-Work
Before we dive into specific cadences, let's get one thing straight: if people are showing up to meetings just to read updates out loud, you're wasting everyone's time.
Every single meeting should require pre-work. People should write things down beforehand. They should come prepared with specific questions, blockers, or decisions that need to be made.
Don't just wing it with no agenda. Make sure there's a clear meeting owner who's responsible for outcomes.
And here's the thing most operators miss: evaluate your meeting cadences at least once a quarter. Get rid of the ones that aren't serving you anymore. Your operating rhythm should evolve as your company grows.
💡 TIP: I have a write-up on how to run efficient meetings that don’t suck, which you can find below. I highly recommend reading it and following it to a tee, so you stop wasting everyone’s collective time. Every operator who has implemented these rules has raved about its success, both in the meeting’s efficacy and also in teammate reception.
📅 1-1s: Know your Team
One-on-one meetings are the cornerstone of good management and clear communication in any organization. When done right, they build trust, catch issues early, and ensure everyone is aligned and supported in their work.
Purpose: Sync with your direct reports to see how you can support them in their roles and career growth.
When to start these: When your team has grown to the point where you can no longer have spontaneous conversations with your teammates to check on these details.
How to run them: Usually 30 minutes long to see how your direct report is feeling at work, what's going on outside of work, and how you can best support them. Collect feedback on how you're doing as a manager, and give them feedback they need to hear.
Cadence: Will depend on the established rapport you have with your teammates. I like once every two weeks, but some people prefer once a month. Once a week feels like overkill for most relationships.
When to evolve: I can't imagine a time these aren't needed, but perhaps you don't have to be the one doing all the 1-1s anymore. If you're the CEO and there's a "Head of" or VP who can own them instead, let them take it.
📝 Skip Level Meetings
If you’re going to be successful as an operator, you need the whole story, not just what you’re exposed to. Therefore, skip level meetings are extremely important to form a complete picture of how the company is actually doing.
Purpose: Check in with people at different levels of the org so managers can get perspective directly from the boots on the ground.
When to start these: If you have multiple levels in your org and there are very few opportunities for a skip-level leader to interact with ICs, this can be helpful for transparency.
How to run them: Usually 30 minutes long. Solicit writing beforehand from ICs about what they like, what they think could be improved, and questions they have for the skip on product, personnel, strategy, etc.
The catch: People need to feel comfortable sharing transparently by establishing rapport for this to work. If your culture doesn't support honest feedback, these will be useless.
🧍 Project-Based Daily Standups: For When You're Moving Fast
Purpose: Get rid of blockers when moving very fast, stay on the same page cross-functionally, drive forward momentum.
When to start these:
When teams are less autonomous and more intertwined
When projects are highly interdependent and you need frequent sync points
When there's high churn or rotation rate needed for updates
How to run them: Usually 15 minutes long to surface and eliminate blockers. Require pre-work so people aren't just talking in circles.
Important: Don't do daily standups that are department-specific. These are usually a waste of time.
When to evolve: When the project wraps up, or when things move less fast with less ambiguity. Feel free to transform these into weekly meetings rather than daily standups when things smooth out.
🤝 Department Weekly Syncs: Getting Your Team Aligned
Purpose: Get your team on the same page, discuss blockers, and give the team an idea of upcoming projects.
When to start these: Every team usually needs these if projects are complex (like Engineering or Sales teams). Also helpful if teammates should collaborate within their teams - engineers doing code reviews, salespeople sharing best practices, etc.
How to run them: Usually 30-60 minutes long to eliminate blockers and discuss decisions that need to be made together.
When to evolve: When teams have grown enough where their work is more project-focused versus department-focused.
🔝 Executive Leadership Team Meetings: The Strategic Heartbeat
Purpose: Get everyone on the same page on company-level initiatives and promote cross-functional collaboration and transparency.
When to start these: When you have an ELT that owns specific outcomes that will drive the company forward.
How to run them: Usually 60 minutes once every two weeks. Require pre-work where leaders write out what their teams are doing, what projects they're overseeing, and what they need from each other. The CEO should have a list of questions on metrics and KPIs that matter.
What to cover: Review OKRs, KPIs, company-level decisions regarding projects, customers, and personnel.
🧑🤝🧑 All Hands: The Company Heartbeat
Purpose: Unify the team, give company-wide updates, celebrate, and reiterate why the work matters.
When to start these: Usually around 6+ people warrants an All Hands so everyone can come together and there's a clear operating cadence for CEOs to stay accountable.
How to run them: Usually 1 hour long, once a week. Anything more frequent than that and people get burned out.
Structure that works:
Team movements and new hires
Written updates from department heads
Deep dive on one important topic
CEO message and company context
Celebrations and wins
When to evolve: I maintain that All Hands are needed throughout the life of a company, since it's the one unifying event that occurs regularly. But the structure should evolve - it might not make sense to do written updates for everyone once you pass 25-30 people. You might need dedicated Town Hall times instead of open Q&A sections.
Quarterly Rhythms: The Bigger Picture
Don't forget the longer-term cadences that keep everything connected:
Offsites: Once a quarter for the leadership team; once a year for the whole team if possible.
OKR/KPI planning: Once a quarter, ideally during an ELT offsite where you can actually think strategically.
Team outings: Once every two months to maintain the "work hard, play hard" culture that keeps people connected.
The Bottom Line
Operating cadences should be tailored to your company's size, stage, and specific needs. There's no one-size-fits-all solution.
But here's what I've learned from working with companies from 10 people to 1000+ people: the best operating rhythms feel invisible when they're working well. People know when they'll get the information they need, when decisions will be made, and when they can focus on deep work.
If your meetings feel like they're getting in the way of work instead of enabling it, something's broken. Fix the rhythm, don't add more meetings to the problem.
Until next time,
Resources Mentioned 📌
Templates + Tools for Operators | Coaching Founder
Written Resources & Playbooks | Coaching Founder
Run Meetings That Don’t Suck | Coaching Founder
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About Regina Gerbeaux
 | Regina Gerbeaux was the first Chief of Staff to an executive coach who worked with Silicon Valley’s most successful entrepreneurs, including Brian Armstrong (Coinbase), Naval Ravikant (AngelList), Sam Altman (OpenAI / Y Combinator), and Alexandr Wang (Scale). |
Shortly after her role as Chief of Staff, then COO, she opened her own coaching practice, Coaching Founder, and has worked with outrageously talented operators on teams like Delphi AI, dYdX, Astronomer, Fanatics Live, and many more companies backed by funds like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz.
Her open-sourced write-ups on Operational Excellence and how to run a scaling company can be found here and her templates can be found here.
She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her partner Lucas and dog Leia, and can be found frequenting 6:00AM Orangetheory classes or hiking trails nearby.
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