The importance of a ‘drumbeat’. Or the story of how clocks came to rule the world.
Imagine you were in medieval Europe, walking down a village; if you asked the local farmer “What time is it?”, you would be met with confused looks and exasperation – because no one knew, no one cared, and no one agreed upon a precise definition of the present time. The concept of time was amorphous & flexible.
Then with the advent of railways and train timetables in the 19th century, it became important that travel across towns could be predictable and synchronised. The Industrial age and the assembly line catapulted this need for precision to the minute – if you were late by a few minutes, your colleagues down the line would be impacted. Greenwich was legislated as the reference point for all of Britain and the rest is history. Radio broadcasts and news stories would start with the time, to align entire countries to a common schedule.
The average home now has more clocks & watches than entire countries a few hundred years ago. You start your day with your alarm clock, and every single activity in your day is governed by your calendar.
What does this have to do with business? Keeping different teams in sync to a common drumbeat will offer a competitive advantage like no other operational tactic. The discipline / regular cadence of predictable operational meetings that drive planning, info sharing, alignment and decision making becomes the ‘clock’ to which the organisation aligns itself. This drumbeat is born from the organisation’s vision and goals, and will help you ‘keep time’ with everyone else. A team that marches to a common beat becomes unstoppable.
p.s. Not every meeting or project is part of the drumbeat. But the drumbeat becomes the underlying clock on top of which you can build flexibility, improvisation and scale. Jazz is all improv, even that has a drumbeat!