Most teams have a weekly meeting. Fewer have a cadence. A meeting is an event on the calendar. A cadence is a repeating rhythm that keeps priorities, commitments, and behaviors in front of the team and corrects drift while it is small.
Jim Marsh, author of Culture OS and Managing Principal of JEM Premier Coaching, has publicly described Cadence as regular review, coaching, recognition, and correction. This article separates the four parts and suggests how each could show up in a leader's week. The rhythms suggested below are practical ideas for this article, not a prescribed schedule from the book.
Review: look at priorities and commitments on a schedule
Review is the part most teams already attempt, though often in the form of status updates. A review asks different questions: Have our priorities changed? Which decisions are due? Which commitments are at risk? Which are done?
A short weekly review with a fixed agenda works better than a long monthly one, because the information is fresh and corrections are cheap. Keep a standing order of topics so people can prepare, and end with a list of what changed and who owns the next step.
Coaching: build the capability to meet the commitments
Coaching asks how the work was done, not only whether it was done. It happens in short conversations: a leader asks a direct report how they approached a stalled decision, what options they weighed, and what they might do differently. The leader's job is to ask questions that sharpen the person's thinking, then offer a perspective when it helps.
A practical rhythm is one coaching conversation per direct report every one or two weeks, about fifteen minutes, anchored to a real piece of work and not a general check-in. Leaders who skip coaching often find themselves repeatedly stepping in to fix the same type of problem.
Recognition: show what good looks like
Recognition is information, not decoration. When a leader names a specific action ("You flagged the supplier risk on Tuesday, and that gave us time to change the schedule"), the whole team learns which behavior counts. Generic praise teaches little. Specific recognition makes a standard visible.
Build it into the review: end with one example of someone doing the work the way you want it done, and say why it mattered.
Correction: address drift while it is small
Correction is the part leaders postpone. A late handoff, a skipped decision step, or a missed review goes unremarked once, then twice. By the fourth time it feels like a pattern that is hard to raise. The earlier the correction, the lighter it can be: "The handoff was due Monday and arrived Wednesday. What got in the way, and what do we change so it lands on time next week?"
Correction works best when it is private, specific, and focused on the next action. Pair it with the same standard you apply to everyone, since selective correction teaches the team that the standard is negotiable.
How the four parts depend on each other
- Review without coaching tells people what slipped but not how to improve.
- Coaching without review has no shared reference to the commitments that matter.
- Recognition without correction gives only half the picture, and correction without recognition makes the team feel only criticism.
Audit your own cadence
Write down every recurring touchpoint in your week and label each as review, coaching, recognition, correction, or none of these. Then check three things: which of the four is missing, whether any meeting is doing the work of two or three purposes poorly, and whether the rhythm survives a busy week. If a practice disappears whenever the calendar gets full, it is a preference, not a cadence.
Choose one missing element and add the smallest version of it for the next four weeks. If a leadership team wants help installing a repeatable meeting rhythm around one live priority, the Culture-to-Execution Sprint covers that as part of its 12-week work.