This 5-Step Operating Rhythm Transformed Our Team and Supercharged Our Results

Running a high-growth SaaS company with a lean team requires more than hustle. It requires a repeatable operating system that brings clarity, focus, and accountability across every level of the org. As President & COO of a large 8-figure PE-backed SaaS company, I’ve had to design systems that scale strategy without slowing down speed. Here’s the backbone of the system I use to run the business.

1. Start with a Clear North Star

Each year, we define a single North Star goal that reflects our biggest strategic priority (e.g., "Grow Net Revenue Retention to 125%" or "Launch 2 New GTM Channels"). Everything else cascades from this. The goal must be simple, memorable, and measurable. We revisit it during quarterly offsites and use it to guide OKRs, budget decisions, and even hiring priorities.

We make this goal visible to every employee—it's posted on dashboards, discussed in town halls, and reinforced in weekly metrics reviews. By tying everything back to the North Star, teams understand how their work contributes to the company's success. It's a powerful unifier.

2. The 4DX Framework

We use the "4 Disciplines of Execution" (4DX) framework to bring that North Star to life:

• Focus on the Wildly Important. This principle is all about clarity and discipline. With countless competing priorities, it’s tempting to try to improve everything at once. But 4DX urges teams to narrow their focus to one or two goals that will move the needle most. In our company, each team selects a single wildly important goal (WIG) every quarter - though internally we call those OKRs. This ensures energy and attention are concentrated, creating real momentum instead of superficial activity. It also makes success easier to define and measure.

• Act on Lead Measures. Lagging indicators (like revenue or churn) tell you what happened—but lead measures tell you what’s happening now. That’s where change occurs. We push teams to identify and track lead measures they can influence weekly—like number of onboarding calls completed within 48 hours or average first response time on support tickets. These lead indicators are highly predictive of our key outcomes and empower teams to take daily ownership of success.

• Keep a Compelling Scoreboard. People play differently when they’re keeping score. We make each team’s progress visual and public. Whether it’s a PowerBI or Tableau dashboard, a Slack-bot update, or a physical board in the office, the scoreboard is designed to be simple, real-time, and team-owned. It fuels accountability and turns metrics into motivation. Employees at all levels can see where they stand and adjust their actions accordingly.

• Create a Cadence of Accountability. Consistency beats intensity. We host weekly team check-ins where team members report on their lead measures, share wins, and commit to one action that will move the goal forward. These are short, focused meetings that reinforce progress and responsibility. The cadence creates a culture of follow-through—everyone knows the goal, sees the score, and feels responsible for delivering.

This gives teams autonomy and clarity. For example, our customer success team may own "Reduce onboarding time by 40%" and track weekly lead measures like "% of accounts activated within 7 days." It's not just about metrics—it's about momentum.

Lead measures are often behavior-based. That’s the beauty of 4DX—it breaks strategy into actions. We see immediate improvements just by tracking small weekly commitments. It’s how a high-level company goal becomes a series of bite-sized habits across the org.

3. Quarterly OKRs

We set quarterly team OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) tied directly to the North Star, which we measure monthly. Each OKR is:

• Outcome-based
• Owner-assigned
• Publicly visible

We track OKRs in Smartsheet (but you can track them anywhere!) and review them monthly with team leaders. This helps surface misalignment early and creates shared accountability. We also score each objective as pass / fail at quarter-end, and use these to inform performance reviews and resource planning. NOTE: OKRs are designed to only be hit 70% because they are supposed to be stretch goals - so failing (as long as you're learning from it) is ok!

Importantly, we don’t just use OKRs as a performance tool—they’re a communication tool. They help ensure everyone is working on the right problems and not optimizing for the wrong outcomes. The discussions they generate are as valuable as the metrics - every team leader reports monthly on metric drivers and lessons learned - regardless of whether the goal was exceeded or missed.

4. Meeting Cadence

Great meetings create leverage. Here's how we structure them, loosely based on Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni:

• Weekly Exec Meeting (60 min). This is where our leadership team aligns on the business’s most important issues. We cover red/yellow/green metrics from our departmental scorecards, unblock key initiatives, and ensure that everyone is driving toward our OKRs. The tone is direct but solution-oriented, and the meeting always ends with clear owners and next steps. Our exec meetings use a shared agenda that tracks rolling issues. Every team has a scorecard with 5-10 KPIs. We open each meeting by scanning metrics—red gets discussed, green gets acknowledged. This rhythm forces clarity and encourages fast course correction.

• Quarterly Business reviews (QBRs) (60-90 min). A deep-dive for each departments. Each function presents results, insights, and trends—marketing shares pipeline health, customer success shares NPS trends, and finance reviews budget vs. actuals. This meeting forces cross-functional visibility and makes sure the company isn’t just moving fast, but moving smart. It's also a great chance for everyone in the org to get facetime with our CEO and ask their candid questions about the company's direction.

• Quarterly Offsite (1-2 days). A strategic pause to reflect, reset, and recommit. We revisit the North Star goal, assess OKR progress and WIGs, and decide what to stop, start, or double down on next quarter. These offsites also include team-building exercises, vision casting, and occasionally guest speakers or leadership workshops to help us level up as a team.

We also use async updates in Slack to reduce unnecessary meeting load.

5. Culture & People Ops

We use the "Who" method of hiring, developed by Geoff Smart and Randy Street, which is centered on a disciplined, repeatable process for consistently hiring A-players. It starts with a Scorecard, not a job description—this outlines exactly what success looks like in the role, including specific outcomes, competencies, and cultural attributes. This sets a shared standard for the hiring team and guides every decision that follows.

From there, we follow a Structured Interview Process, including the Who Interview, which walks through a candidate's full career history to identify patterns of performance and fit. We layer in focused Topgrading-style questions, culture fit discussions, and reference checks that are structured and tied directly to the Scorecard.

We make Outcome-Based Evaluation a cornerstone of our process. Instead of vague impressions, we assess whether candidates have consistently delivered outcomes similar to those we need in the role. We also debrief as a hiring team to pressure-test assumptions and keep quality high.

We supplement this with quarterly eNPS surveys to ensure the culture remains strong and that we're not just hiring great people—but keeping them engaged. I also hold skip-levels monthly with high-potential team members across departments to stay close to the ground, uncover risks early, and continuously refine our org’s talent engine.

Every new hire receives a 30/60/90 Day Ramp Plan, a personal onboarding doc, and a buddy. Every team lead gets quarterly management coaching, because we believe operational scale is only possible with leadership scale.

We also hold monthly Culture Council meetings to gather cross-functional employee feedback, and track themes over time. Retention starts with listening. It’s not flashy—but it works.

Want to implement something similar? I mentor founders, operators, and startup leaders looking to scale smart. Book a session with me on MentorCruise.