You invested in Cascade to improve visibility, alignment, and speed of decision-making. But strategy doesn't live in a static document; it lives in the rhythm of your business—your Cadences.

In this lesson, we introduce the concept of "Strategy Cadences": what they are, why they are often broken, and the three-step process to fixing them using Cascade’s automation and AI.

What is a 'Strategy Cadence'?

A cadence is simply a recurring touchpoint where performance is reviewed and decisions are made. In Cascade, this covers a wide spectrum of interactions:

• Strategic: Board reporting and Senior Leadership Team (SLT) meetings.
• Functional: Weekly Marketing or Sales team meetings.
• Operational: Portfolio reviews, Project Transformation updates.
• Individual: Recurring one-to-one performance check-ins.

These are the moments where your strategy is actually executed. If these meetings are slow, data-poor, or focused on the wrong things, your strategy stalls.

The Value of Automating Cadences

Why move these meetings into Cascade?

1. Unlock the "Hidden 95%"

Did you know that businesses typically use only about 5% of their available data to make decisions? The other 95% is locked away in silos, disparate software tools, or people's heads.

• The Cascade Fix: We don't create more data; we connect to the data you already have (Qual and Quant) and put it in front of leaders.

2. End the "Chasing" Game

Your teams likely spend hours every month manually compiling reports, chasing colleagues for updates, and "polishing" data in Excel.

• The Cascade Fix: Automated requests and reminders mean the system does the chasing, not you.

3. "Supercharged" Meetings

Traditional meetings rely on static slides that are out of date the moment they are exported.

• The Cascade Fix: Cascade reports are live. You can drill down, filter, and interrogate the data in real-time during the meeting.

4. Context via Tapestry AI

Raw data is just noise. Cascade’s Tapestry AI maps your data against your strategy to tell you not just what happened, but why it matters and what to do next.

• The Cascade Fix: Cascade has tools that automatically ingest strategy context from meetings, emails, conversations and documents.

The 3-Step Cadence Workflow

Setting up a strong cadence in Cascade follows a specific lifecycle. We will dive deeper into each of these in upcoming lessons, but here is the high-level workflow:

Step 1: Build the Report

The report is the "venue" for your meeting. It is where the decisions happen.

• Goal: Create a dynamic dashboard that serves as the single source of truth for the meeting.

Step 2: Request the Data

This is where automation kicks in. You schedule the system to ask goal owners for updates.

• The AI Advantage: When a user is asked for an update, Cascade’s Tapestry AI checks connected integrations (Salesforce, Jira, etc.) and drafts the update for them, curating relevant quantitative and qualitative data automatically.

Step 3: Human Accountability

This is a critical philosophy at Cascade: AI supports, but Humans decide.

• The Workflow: The AI suggests the update based on the data, but the Goal Owner (the human) reviews, edits, and submits the final version. This ensures speed without losing accountability.

Summary

• Cadences are everywhere: From Board meetings to 1:1s, they are the heartbeat of execution.
• Stop compiling, start analyzing: Shift effort from "making the slides" to "making decisions."
• Human + AI: Use AI to gather the data and draft the narrative, but ensure human owners have the final say before it reaches the boardroom.