I helped build and scale Tulip Telecom to a peak market capitalisation of about US$800 million. I also lived through its collapse. When founders ask what I would do differently, they expect a strategy answer. It isn't one. The first thing I would change is a rhythm.
A company moving fast feels aligned, because nobody has time to notice they are pulling in different directions. Misalignment at speed doesn't announce itself. It accrues quietly — in duplicated work, in decisions relitigated three times, in the founder slowly becoming the only place where information meets.
What an operating rhythm actually is
Not more meetings. Usually fewer, shorter, with completely different jobs:
- A daily huddle — minutes, standing, no agenda beyond: what moved, what's stuck, who needs whom today. Synchronisation, not status.
- A weekly tactical — the leadership team against the quarter's priorities. Numbers first, then the one or two issues that actually matter this week.
- A monthly strategic — working on one significant issue properly, instead of in the week's noise.
- A quarterly planning session — priorities reset, on one page, with one owner per priority.
Each meeting has exactly one job. The moment the huddle becomes a status report, or the weekly becomes a debating society, the rhythm is broken — and the hallway takes over again.
Why founders resist it
Because it smells like bureaucracy, and founders build companies to escape bureaucracy. And below a certain size they are right: the informal network genuinely works, because everyone hears everything anyway. Past roughly ₹100 crore it stops working. The founder's calendar becomes the company's nervous system — and a nervous system that routes everything through one person does not scale.
The calendar is the culture. Show me a leadership team's recurring meetings and I will tell you what the company actually values, whatever the posters in reception say.
When to install it
Earlier than feels necessary. A rough test: if your leadership team is more than five people and the current quarter's priorities live in people's heads rather than on one page, you are already late. The right moment to install a rhythm is the quarter before you desperately need it. Installed under pressure, it reads as control. Installed early, it reads as clarity.
This is also why an offsite by itself changes nothing: the offsite produces the page, but the rhythm is what makes the page true. If you are planning one, design the cadence that follows it before you book the venue — that is most of what a well-run strategic offsite is for. And if you want to see where your company actually stands before changing its cadence, the four-minute readiness assessment is the place to start.