Finding Cadence

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Cadence. The beat, rate, or measure of any rhythmic movement.

Hearing the word “cadence” makes me think of hip hop mega-hit ‘In Da Club’ by 50 Cent.

When I trained to qualify for the Boston Marathon, my running coach started me off running to a metronome. Once we dialed my stride turnover to a cadence of 180 beats per minute (bpm), I was able to switch over to music – and the perfect 180 bpm song is In Da Club.

Over and over and over again, I must have run to that song thousands of times. Sure, there are other songs and Spotify playlists with a 180 bpm tempo, but this one, with its iconic intro, 'go shorty, it's your birthday,' became the anthem of my journey. The journey of cadence propelled me from a 4+ hour marathon to a 3:35. I think I played a small part in that song going 9x platinum. Felt like 10,000 hours.

10,000 hours. That’s what Malcolm Gladwell highlights in Outliers: The Story of Success as the accumulated time to master a skill.

“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good." – Malcolm Gladwell

In his book, Gladwell explained the concept of the “10,000-Hour Rule” with the story of the Beatles. They became world-famous musicians by having the opportunity to perform live as a group in Hamburg, Germany over 1,200 times between 1960 and 1964. They accumulated more than 10,000 hours by playing nonstop. He asserts that the key to achieving true expertise in any skill is simply a matter of practicing, albeit in the correct way, for at least 10,000 hours.

In a New Yorker article, Gladwell shares that psychologist John Hayes looked at seventy-six famous classical composers and found that, in almost every case, those composers did not create their greatest work until they had been composing for at least ten years.?(The sole exceptions: Shostakovich and Paganini, who took nine years, and Erik Satie, who took eight.) He states: “In cognitively demanding fields, there are no naturals.”

Just as a runner relies on the steady beat of 50 Cent, to find their running cadence, businesses, too, need their own rhythm for success.

Think of business cadence as?a rhythmic sequence of routines, processes, and systems toward the goals of an organization. These patterns create the discipline to drive individuals and teams to greater outcomes.

Let me put it bluntly: If you want to get shit done, create a cadence.

This is why Agile, and particularly Scrum, works. Scrum, an Agile framework originally developed for software development, has proven to be a valuable tool for customer experience teams. It fosters collaboration, adaptability, and continuous improvement. In Scrum, we establish rhythms to deliver work; this cadence is a foundational element of the framework that must not be ignored.

So, what is cadence in Scrum?

·?????? Work is organized into two or three-week Sprints. There are no breaks – we move seamlessly from one Sprint to the next.

·?????? We establish four ceremonies: Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective. The schedule is highly repetitive, with the same days of the week reserved for each ceremony. For example, in a two-week sprint, the Sprint Review occurs every other Wednesday.

Clarity about the work and accountability from every team member is essential, of course. Once that’s in place, the cadence of scrum is the pulse to keep things moving.

With cadence, we see

• increased productivity in delivering feature-rich products,
• faster time-to-market of products and services to market faster,
• Improved customer satisfaction, since customer feedback is part of the process,
• and because of the iterative nature of this cadence, teams are able to shift gears much quicker, thus adapting to changing market conditions and customer preferences.

For leaders reading this who want to implement improvements to the customer experience: you need to build effective cross-functional teams that are aligned on a mission. These teams, utilizing Scrum, establish patterns of frequent delivery and consistently iterate – serving as change agents for the organization.

Here's the key: these teams need dedicated time for practice. Just as the Beatles honed their musical expertise through countless hours of performing together, businesses can achieve mastery by practicing as a cohesive team within a structured cadence.

In Customer Experience Scrum, this practice takes the form of Sprint after Sprint, where teams collaborate to deliver work in a highly iterative and disciplined manner. It's not just about hitting deadlines; it's about refining processes, adapting to changing circumstances, and collectively improving with each cycle.

In the cadence of business and life, success isn't an accident; it's a result of deliberate practice, teamwork, and a commitment to continuous improvement. As you navigate your journey, remember that finding your cadence can be the key to achieving your goals and delivering exceptional customer experiences.

Want help getting your team in a successful cadence of customer experience improvement? Let’s talk!

LoyaltyCraft?was built out of a passion for helping companies create meaningful customer experiences. Founded in 2016 by Lauren Feehrer CCXP, we focus on strategy, qualitative research, customer design, and employee engagement to help mid-market companies open the door to new customers and keep existing ones from leaving out the backdoor.