The Rhythm of Business Changed. Did Yours?

By: Jon Dwoskin

“When do things get back to normal?”

I hear it every week. From business owners, from sales leaders, from CEOs.

They feel it. Something has been off since Covid, and they keep waiting for it to settle.

It won’t.

They’re right that everything is different. Things move faster. Technology changes daily. What worked 18 months ago feels dated today.

But normal isn’t coming back, and the people still waiting for it are losing ground every day they wait.

What I see inside companies right now

The annual plan, built in December, stale by March.

The Monday sales meeting, reviewing last week’s numbers.

The follow-up that goes out in 48 hours to a buyer who decided in 4.

The six-week hiring process, asking 2019 questions, for a candidate who’s gone in ten days.

The quarterly review, for an employee who needed the conversation yesterday.

I see it in solopreneurs, and I see it in Fortune 100 sales teams. Size doesn’t protect you.

None of that is laziness. These are good companies with smart people, working hard.

They’re just running on yesterday’s rhythm.

Every business has a rhythm

Rhythm is the pace at which things actually happen inside your company.

How fast you follow up. How often you meet. How long you take to decide. How quickly you hire, respond, pivot, and ship.

The company has one. Every person in it has one too. How you start your day, how often you talk to your team, how long a problem sits on your desk before you deal with it.

Most of it was never designed. It was inherited. Somebody set the Monday meeting years ago. Somebody decided planning happens once a year. It worked, so nobody questioned it.

Then the world sped up.

Nobody sent a memo. There was no announcement. Your customers got faster, your competitors got faster, your best people got faster, and the beat inside your company stayed the same.

The tell

Here’s the dangerous part. A company on the wrong rhythm doesn’t look broken.

Everyone is busy. Calendars are full. People are putting in the hours.

So when results slow down, leaders reach for the only lever they know. Push harder. More hours, more meetings, more effort.

And they get less for it.

That’s the tell. When effort goes up and results go flat, you don’t have a work ethic problem.

You have a rhythm problem.

A few other signs to watch for:

• You keep hearing about problems after it’s too late to fix them.
• Deals die quietly, and nobody can say exactly when you lost them.
• Your best people seem frustrated, and they’re waiting on you more than you’re waiting on them.
• Your plan and your reality stopped matching months ago, and everyone knows it.
• Decisions that should take a day take three weeks.
• Your managers got the job because they were good at their work, but they can’t manage people. You never noticed, and their department numbers are down.
• Your salespeople aren’t hitting quota and can’t figure out why. They’re lacking the courage to sell in today’s market.
• Your internal message isn’t clear. Leaders are long-winded, they like to hear themselves talk, and they don’t listen.
• Your meetings run too long, and they’re full of people who don’t need to be there.

What a new rhythm looks like

Many of my clients are professional service firms.

Smart people, great at what they do. And their rhythm was the old one. Do great work, and wait for the phone to ring.

That worked for a long time. They were the people everyone called.

Here’s what their teams didn’t realize. They were salespeople. Every one of them.

Nobody had ever trained them that way, so they did what they had always done. They took orders.

We changed the rhythm. We trained their professionals as salespeople, and got them out in the field.

The businesses started growing quickly. One firm saw seven-figure results.

Same people. Same expertise. A different rhythm.

I see it again and again. When firms that have always been the people that people call start training their people as salespeople, they see huge results.

How to find your new rhythm

The good news is that you can see a rhythm, and you can change it.

Every rhythm comes down to three speeds.

How fast you see. How long before a problem, a stalled deal, or an unhappy employee reaches you? If you find out at the monthly meeting, your rhythm is a month.

How fast you decide. Once you know, how long does the decision sit? Count the days between “we should do something” and “here’s what we’re doing.”

How fast you act. Once it’s decided, how long until the customer, the candidate, or the team actually feels it?

Run those three questions against everything on your calendar. Every recurring meeting, every planning cycle, every review.

Then ask when each one was set, and why. If the answer is “we’ve always done it that way,” it was built for a different speed.

You don’t have to change everything. Find the slowest loop, the one costing you the most, and shorten it. Plan in 90 days, not 12 months. Coach weekly, not quarterly. Follow up in hours, not days.

And start with yourself. A team runs at the pace of its leader. If your day runs on an old beat, so does theirs.

That’s the work I do. I help companies, salespeople, and leaders get unstuck, see the rhythm they’re running on, and find the one they need now.

Start with your calendar

Look at your calendar this week.

How much of it was built for the speed of 2019?

The question was never when things get back to normal.

The question is, what’s your new rhythm?

Find it, and everything gets easier. Miss it, and you’ll keep pushing harder for less.

THINK BIG.

Jon Dwoskin

Business Coach

248.535.7796