GrowthForge: Field Notes #6

 Most growing businesses don’t notice when their operating rhythm stops doing what it once did.

The meetings are still there. The calendar still fills up. Reports are prepared and circulated. From the outside, it looks like the organisation is communicating regularly and paying attention to what matters.

What changes, slowly and often without being named, is that the rhythm no longer carries the work forward.

In the early stages of a business, cadence is usually informal but effective. Conversations happen naturally, often close to where the work is actually done. Decisions are made quickly, sometimes imperfectly, but with enough context to keep things moving. Because people are close to the consequences, feedback is immediate and learning happens in real time.

As the business grows, that implicit rhythm begins to strain.

More work is happening in parallel. More people are involved in each outcome. Dependencies increase and consequences take longer to surface. The same weekly meeting that once worked as a coordination point is now expected to align priorities, make decisions, surface risks, and ensure follow-through across a much more complex system.

Gradually, the nature of those meetings shifts.

Time is spent reporting rather than deciding. Issues are raised, sometimes thoughtfully, but not resolved in the room. Actions are discussed, but ownership becomes diffuse. People leave with a sense of having been busy, without being entirely clear on what has actually moved forward.

This is often framed as a discipline problem. Meetings need tighter agendas. People need to come better prepared. Someone needs to “run the room” more firmly.

Occasionally, those changes help at the margins. More often, they increase the sense of activity without restoring momentum.

The deeper issue is usually that the operating rhythm no longer matches the complexity of the business.

A cadence that worked when the organisation was smaller struggles once work spans multiple teams, decision cycles lengthen, and outcomes depend on coordination rather than individual effort. The rhythm hasn’t failed; it has simply been overtaken by scale.

When cadence and complexity drift out of alignment, work starts to leak between meetings. Decisions are deferred because they don’t quite belong anywhere. Issues resurface week after week because there is no clear moment where they are meant to be resolved. Accountability softens, not because people don’t care, but because the system doesn’t hold memory very well.

Owners often experience this as a sense of drag.

The same topics return. Priorities need to be re-clarified. Progress depends on personal follow-ups rather than the organisation carrying itself forward. Without meaning to, the owner becomes the mechanism that keeps things aligned.

The instinctive response is to add more structure. More meetings. More reporting. More check-ins. It feels responsible, even reassuring.

It rarely fixes the problem.

Effective operating rhythm isn’t about frequency or control. It’s about fit.

A healthy rhythm creates clear moments for different kinds of work. There are places where decisions are meant to be made, and separate moments where progress is reviewed. Thinking time isn’t crowded out by operational noise, and execution isn’t constantly interrupted by re-alignment.

Most importantly, a well-designed rhythm allows the business to keep moving even when the owner steps back.

When the rhythm is right, work advances between meetings rather than piling up inside them. Decisions stick because they are made in the right forum, with the right authority present. Follow-through improves because ownership is clear and the system expects progress, rather than relying on reminders.

When the rhythm is wrong, everything slows unless the owner intervenes.

This is one of the quieter reasons growth can feel exhausting, even when the team is capable and committed. It’s not that people are resisting or underperforming. It’s that the organisation no longer has a cadence that reflects how work actually flows.

Fixing this isn’t about better meetings. It’s about redesigning the rhythm to suit the business as it is now, not as it used to be.

When that happens, meetings become quieter and more purposeful. Decisions travel shorter distances. Progress becomes visible without constant checking.

And the business starts to move again, not through increased effort, but through alignment.

If that feels familiar and you’d like to talk it through, you’re welcome to book a short exploratory conversation.