Cadence

Systeric runs on a stack of rhythms, not one calendar. At the top, planning happens on a 6-month / 4-week schedule (aspirations set every six months, commitments made every four weeks) and underneath sit the weekly, daily, and management beats. None of them replace each other: the daily handoff catches what the weekly call is too slow for, and the four-week block catches what the six-month plan is too slow for.

This page is the navigator. The planning cadence is below; the full table of beats (and the doc that owns each one’s mechanics) follows it.

The planning cadence#

We plan on a 6-month / 4-week schedule: the former for aspirations, the latter for commitments. We deliberately don’t plan on 13-week quarters: in a fast-moving environment a quarter is too long to truly commit to and too short to achieve something strategic. (Adapted from Shishir Mehrotra’s “Rituals for Hypergrowth”.)

Every 6 months: Strategic planning (H1 / H2). Two-pager intake from every team, then a prioritization pass, produces ~6 Big Rocks and a resource allocation for the half. This is where aspirations are set. See Half Strategy.
Every quarter: Strategic checkpoint. A lighter mid-half re-forecast: are the Big Rocks still right, has the diagnosis changed? Reallocate, kill, or add a rock: no full re-plan. So a 6-month horizon never goes a whole half without a strategic look. See Half Strategy.
Every 4 weeks: Block planning (~3 per quarter, ~6 per half). Each team commits to 4–5 concrete goals for the block: true 100% commitments, not aspirations, so one team can depend on another’s. Inside each block runs a 2-week working rhythm for demos and observable progress. See Blocks & Sprints.
Every week: the operating beats. The weekly product call, updates, 1:1s, and the daily handoffs in the table below keep the blocks honest between planning moments.

The rhythms#

Every recurring beat in one place. Each row links to the doc that owns the detail.

Rhythm	Cadence	Who	Purpose	Where it’s defined
Two-pager reviews	Every 6 months, before planning	Leads + leadership	Intake: what each team did / wants to do next, seeds the Big Rocks	Two-pagers
Strategic planning	Every 6 months (H1 / H2)	All leadership stakeholders	Set the ~6 Big Rocks + resource allocation for the half	Half Strategy
Strategic checkpoint	Quarterly (mid-half)	Leadership	Re-forecast the Big Rocks: reallocate, kill, add; not a full re-plan	Half Strategy
Block planning	Every 4 weeks (~3 / quarter)	Every team	Commit to 4–5 concrete goals for the block (100% commitments)	Blocks & Sprints
Async end-of-day handoff	Daily	Whoever is ending their day, across timezones	Keep work moving with no synchronous hub: in progress, blocked, pending	The Team
Initiative update	Every active initiative, ≥ every 2 days	The DRI	Keep status honest; no update in 2 days is stale	The DRI
Weekly Product Call	Weekly, 30 min	PM + delivery owner	Three questions: on track, blockers, ad hocs	Weekly Product Call
Weekly Business Review	Weekly	The team	Read the metrics deck: north star + inputs WoW, dig into variances	Operating Reviews
Monthly Business Review	Monthly	The team + leadership	The month in metrics: trends, bets vs target, deep dives → investor update	Operating Reviews
Weekly update	Mondays, prior week	PM, to clients + leadership	Full visibility in under two minutes: shipped, in progress, impact, asks	How Systeric Works
Weekly report	Weekly, per person	Every person, to their lead	Self-reported progress, blockers, confidence, feeds the 1:1	Weekly Report
Investor update	Monthly	Area lead / DRI, to leadership (+ investors)	The CEO’s-eye view: metrics vs target, wins, misses, and asks	Operating Reviews
Demo	Per 2-week sprint inside a block	PM + PD, with the engineer	A hands-on look at working software, not a status update	Build
Calendar upkeep	Weekly (this week + next)	Everyone	Keep availability visible so the team can schedule	Scheduling
Manager 1:1	Biweekly, 30 min (weekly for new hires / if struggling)	Every manager and report	Accountability and unblocking	Leading People
Code walk	Monthly, inside the 1:1	Every engineer and their lead	A coaching session on real PRs, not a review	How We Ship
Retro (Learn)	Per project, once shipped	PM, PD, PE together	An honest read on whether it worked and what to change	Learn
Quarterly 1:1	Quarterly, 60–90 min	Every manager and report	Direction and goal-setting for the period	Leading People
Review cycle	Quarterly + half-year peer round	Everyone + reviewers	Self-score vs the role rubric, reconciled with the reviewers’ read	Performance Review Cycle
Annual 1:1	Annually, 60–90 min	Every manager and report	Performance, compensation, what’s next, no surprises	Leading People
Onboarding 1:1s	Buddy: daily, tapering. Manager: weekly → biweekly	Buddy + manager, with the apprentice	Transfer norms fast, then step back as autonomy shows	PE Apprenticeship

A proven shape#

None of this is bespoke. It mirrors the operating cadence Claire Hughes Johnson describes running at Stripe and Google in Scaling People, a stack of nested rhythms from the year down to the day. We run the same shape, with our own names:

Stripe / Scaling People	Ours
Annual planning	Annual vision → Half Strategy each half
Quarterly business review (QBR)	QBR (read the quarter): drives the checkpoint mid-half, or Half Strategy at the half boundary
Monthly all-hands	Monthly MBR + investor update
Biweekly 1:1s	Manager 1:1 (biweekly; weekly for new / struggling)
Weekly snippets + team meeting with metrics review	Weekly report (snippets) + WBR (metrics) + Weekly Product Call
Daily standups	Async daily handoff (across timezones)

The point of adopting a known-good shape is that it’s already been stress-tested at scale: we spend our judgment on running the beats well, not on inventing the calendar.