The COO ran every meeting like a fire drill. He paced the conference room with a phone welded to his hand, radiating the tension of someone always mildly exasperated. Priorities shifted weekly, sometimes daily. Each pivot came with airtight confidence, as if tone alone could supply alignment. The system never had time to settle.

Six months later we were back at the starting line, only more tired and less trusting. Dissonance, not slowness, had undone us. Work felt like listening to a band where every musician was talented and no one played in the same key. You could almost make out the song, but the clashing notes made you wince.

Looking back, I can see the comedy in it: grown adults chasing their own decisions in circles, convinced that moving faster would somehow create forward motion. At the time, though, nothing felt funny.

Marketing rebuilt campaigns mid-flight. Product slipped deadlines without warning. Sales cycled through decks so fast no one bothered to memorize them. Everyone sprinted, but nothing landed. It was noise, not music.

The same discord kept turning up in different places. Sales sprinting toward end-of-quarter while Product drifted mid-roadmap. London handing off work to San Francisco at unpredictable hours, sometimes polished, sometimes duct-taped. Individually, everyone stayed "on track." Together, they were playing different songs.

The best rhythm I've known came from something small: a Tuesday demo. Fifteen minutes, once a week. No slides, very little polish. Just someone showing whatever they'd built. Sometimes broken, sometimes half-baked, sometimes great. Awkward silences didn't last. Laughter helped the room to shift.

What mattered wasn't the quality of the demo but the effect it had on the air in the room. People leaned in. Questions flew earlier, sharper, and with way less defensiveness. Someone might sketch an idea on the whiteboard, and a week later it showed up in real life. The rhythm made handoffs smoother because nothing stayed buried; you could see the work evolving in front of you. Conversations quickened. Trust rebuilt itself in increments. The demo didn't just show progress, it created the conditions for it.

That tiny ritual carried more gravity than any grand initiative. Work bent around the need to have something worth showing. Feedback arrived early, in real time. Problems surfaced before they calcified.

Rhythm is like that: less about scheduling than about sensing. Once the music is underway, you don't really count. Everyone just feels it.

Rhythm rarely disappears in a blaze. More often it fades. Meetings still happen, processes still run, but timing frays. First small delays, then simple decisions that drag out, then handoffs that arrive off-key. People grow brittle. Friction eats the energy alive. Eventually the sound collapses. Everyone plays louder; nobody listens.

I've come to think of teams less as machines and more as bands. Sheet music matters, but listening matters more. The best groups know when to lead, when to follow, when to pause and let someone else take the solo. That kind of attention doesn't reward frantic multitasking or constant urgency. It rewards awareness, the ability to hear how your tempo shapes everyone else's.

Speed without rhythm is just noise. Rhythm turns effort into momentum, the difference between a room full of people making sound and a group making music. The beat matters more than the tempo. Rhythm can be rebuilt. Someone just has to keep listening.

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