How to Work ON Your Business, Not Just IN It
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The Strategic Thinking Cadence
You're drowning in the day-to-day.
Emails pile up. Meetings fill your calendar. Customer issues demand immediate attention. Every day ends with a nagging feeling that while you were busy putting out fires, the big moves that would actually grow your business remained untouched.
Look familiar?
Most entrepreneurs are trapped in a deadly cycle—working in their business rather than on it. They're executing tactics without revisiting strategy. They're so busy rowing the boat that they never look up to check if they're still headed toward the right shore.
Meanwhile, a small group of founders has cracked the code. They've implemented a systematic approach to strategic thinking that gives them an almost unfair advantage. They're playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.
This isn't about being smarter. It's about having a strategic thinking cadence.
Andy Grove, the legendary CEO who built Intel into a global powerhouse, mastered this approach decades ago. His methods created billions in value and influenced generations of leaders. Yet most entrepreneurs completely miss these lessons.
In this newsletter, I'll break down how to implement a strategic thinking cadence that transforms how you run your business, why regular reflection beats reactive decision-making, and the practical routines that ensure you're working on the right things—not just working hard.
Because once you understand strategic cadences, you'll never run your business the same way again.
The Operational Trap Most Entrepreneurs Fall Into
Let me be blunt.
Most entrepreneurs aren't strategic. They're just busy.
They confuse motion with progress. They mistake activity for achievement. They're so consumed with getting through each day that they never step back to ask if they're even building something meaningful.
I've worked with hundreds of founders who proudly told me they were "in the trenches" every day. They wore their 80-hour weeks like badges of honor.
Then I asked a simple question: "When was the last time you dedicated a full day to thinking about where your business will be in three years?"
The silence was deafening.
Here's what most founders don't realize: The quality of your strategic thinking directly determines the ceiling of your success.
It doesn't matter how efficiently you execute the wrong strategy.
Andy Grove understood this when he built Intel. Despite running one of the fastest-growing companies in history, he regularly stepped away from operations to think bigger questions:
What business are we really in?
What could put us out of business?
Where should we allocate resources for maximum impact?
This wasn't a luxury. It was his most important work.
The results speak for themselves. Under Grove's leadership, Intel's value increased 4,500x. He didn't achieve this by working harder than everyone else—he achieved it by thinking more strategically.
The truth? Your business will never outgrow the quality of your strategic thinking.
Let's explore how to break out of the operational trap and implement a strategic cadence that transforms your business.
The Grove Method: Strategic Thinking on a Schedule
Andy Grove didn't leave strategic thinking to chance.
He built it into the operating system of Intel through a structured cadence. This wasn't about occasional retreats or annual planning sessions. It was a disciplined approach to regularly stepping back from the day-to-day to focus on bigger questions.
Here's how the Grove Method works and how you can adapt it for your business:
1. The Weekly Reflection
Grove started each week with what he called "quiet time"—90 minutes of uninterrupted thinking focused on a single question:
"What's the most important thing I need to be thinking about right now?"
This wasn't about reviewing to-do lists or planning the week's meetings. It was pure, unstructured thinking about the highest-leverage issues facing the business.
During these sessions, Grove would:
Identify emerging threats and opportunities
Question current priorities
Consider resource allocation adjustments
Reflect on recent decisions and their implications
The power of this practice is its simplicity. By dedicating specific time to think without the pressure to produce immediate results, Grove created space for insights that would never emerge during busy operational work.
How to implement this:
Block 60-90 minutes each Monday morning before opening email or Slack. Turn off all notifications. Have only a notebook (physical or digital) in front of you. Ask yourself Grove's question and follow your thinking wherever it leads.
This isn't time to create action plans—it's time to think. The only rule is to capture your thoughts.
The first few sessions will feel uncomfortable. Your mind will crave the dopamine of checking tasks off a list. Push through this resistance. The highest ROI activities in your business will emerge from these thinking blocks.
2. The Monthly Business Review
While weekly reflections focus on emerging issues, Grove used monthly reviews to systematically examine the business from a higher level.
Once a month, he would analyze:
Key metrics across the business
Progress against quarterly goals
Resource allocation effectiveness
Competitive landscape changes
Team performance and capabilities
What made Grove's approach different was his focus on leading indicators—metrics that predict future performance—rather than just reviewing what had already happened.
For example, rather than just looking at current sales, he examined:
Changes in sales cycle length
New competitor product announcements
Customer support ticket trends
Key employee satisfaction
By identifying patterns in these leading indicators, Grove could spot issues months before they showed up in financial results.
How to implement this:
Schedule a half-day each month to review your business systematically. Create a dashboard of 5-7 key metrics that serve as leading indicators for your specific business. Look for patterns and anomalies, not just absolute numbers.
Ask yourself: "What's changing in our business that isn't yet obvious in our primary metrics?"
Then document your observations and one to three adjustments you'll make based on what you've learned.
This monthly cadence prevents the "boiling frog" syndrome where incremental changes go unnoticed until they become crises.
3. The Quarterly Strategic Offsite
Every quarter, Grove would step completely away from operations for two full days of strategic thinking. These weren't traditional offsites filled with team-building activities and presentation marathons.
They were structured around what Grove called "strategic inflection points"—moments when the fundamentals of a business might need to change.
During these sessions, he examined questions like:
"If I were replacing myself as CEO, what would I do differently?"
"What business should we exit in the next 12 months?"
"What capabilities do we need to build now for success in three years?"
The power of these quarterly offsites was their ability to break the hypnotic effect of day-to-day operations and create space for fundamental reassessment.
How to implement this:
Even if you're a solopreneur, schedule a quarterly two-day period where you step away from operations entirely. Change your physical environment—work from a hotel, a library, or anywhere that isn't your normal workspace.
Disconnect from email and messaging. Bring only the materials needed to think deeply about your business. Structure your time around 3-5 fundamental questions about your direction, not tactical issues.
Document your insights, decisions, and any strategic shifts, then schedule specific time to implement these changes when you return to operations.
Now that we've covered the core elements of Grove's strategic cadence, let's look at how to make this approach work in different types of businesses.
Adapting the Strategic Cadence for Your Business
The beauty of Grove's approach isn't that it worked for Intel specifically—it's that the principles can be adapted to any business, from solo consultancies to growing startups to established companies.
Here's how to tailor this approach based on your specific situation:
For Solopreneurs and Freelancers
When you're a one-person business, it's especially easy to get trapped in delivery mode. But strategic thinking is even more critical when all decisions fall on your shoulders.
Simplified Cadence:
Weekly: 60 minutes of reflection on Sunday evening or Monday morning
Monthly: 2-hour review of client mix, project profitability, and emerging opportunities
Quarterly: Full day to reassess positioning, pricing, and service offerings
Implementation Tips:
Use your weekly reflection to prioritize client outreach and business development alongside delivery work
In monthly reviews, analyze which clients or projects generate the most profit per hour, not just the most revenue
For quarterly strategy sessions, consider working with a coach or trusted peer who can challenge your thinking
For Early-Stage Startups (2-10 People)
With a small team, founders often feel they can't step away from operations. But this is precisely when strategic clarity matters most.
Adapted Cadence:
Weekly: 90-minute founder reflection plus 60-minute team alignment session
Monthly: Half-day review including financial health, product milestones, and customer feedback
Quarterly: Two-day offsite to reassess product-market fit and resource allocation
Implementation Tips:
Include key team members in the monthly and quarterly sessions to build strategic thinking capabilities throughout the organization
Focus monthly reviews on runway and cash flow alongside growth metrics
Use quarterly sessions to decide what you will stop doing as much as what you'll start
For Growing Businesses (10-50 People)
As your company grows, strategic alignment becomes more challenging but even more critical.
Scaled Cadence:
Weekly: 2-hour executive team strategic sync
Monthly: Full-day business review with department leaders
Quarterly: Two-day offsite with broader leadership team involvement
Implementation Tips:
Cascade the strategic thinking cadence throughout the organization by having each department head implement their own version
During monthly reviews, focus on cross-functional dependencies and resource conflicts
Use quarterly sessions to assess organizational health and capability gaps, not just business metrics
Next, let's look at the most common obstacles to implementing a strategic thinking cadence—and how to overcome them.
Overcoming the Barriers to Strategic Thinking
When I share this approach with founders, I typically hear three objections:
"I don't have time for this."
"My business changes too quickly for long-term planning."
"I already think about strategy plenty."
Let's address each of these barriers directly.
The Time Fallacy
Claiming you don't have time for strategic thinking is like saying you don't have time to look at a map because you're too busy driving.
The truth is you don't have time NOT to think strategically.
Every hour spent in strategic reflection can save dozens or hundreds of hours of wasted operational effort. It's the highest leverage activity in your business.
Andy Grove put it this way: "The output of a manager is the output of their team plus the output of neighboring teams under their influence." Strategic thinking is what maximizes that output multiplication.
If you truly cannot find 90 minutes a week for unstructured thinking, that itself is a strategic problem that deserves immediate attention. It indicates your business is running you, not the other way around.
The "Things Change Too Fast" Myth
Some founders believe their market moves too quickly for strategic thinking to be valuable. This fundamentally misunderstands what strategic thinking is.
Strategic thinking isn't about rigid five-year plans. It's about developing clarity on:
What business you're really in
What unique value you provide
What capabilities you need to develop
How you allocate limited resources
These questions matter more in fast-changing environments, not less.
In fact, Grove developed his approach specifically because the semiconductor industry was changing at a breakneck pace. The strategic cadence was Intel's adaptation mechanism, not something that slowed them down.
The Delusion of Adequate Strategic Thinking
Many entrepreneurs believe they already think strategically because they have good ideas or make quick decisions.
But true strategic thinking is:
Systematic rather than sporadic
Comprehensive rather than fragmented
Questioning rather than confirming
Forward-looking rather than reactive
Without a structured cadence, most "strategic thinking" is actually just tactical problem-solving with a longer time horizon.
The power of Grove's approach is that it forces you to regularly engage with the most important questions, even when—especially when—the urgent is screaming for your attention.
Now, let's put this into a practical framework you can implement immediately.
Your 30-Day Strategic Cadence Implementation Plan
Building a strategic thinking practice isn't complicated, but it requires commitment. Here's a simple 30-day plan to establish your own cadence:
Week 1: Establish Your Weekly Reflection
Schedule 90 minutes on your calendar for next Monday morning
Create a distraction-free environment (different location if possible)
Bring only a notebook and pen (no devices)
Ask yourself: "What's the most important thing I should be thinking about right now?"
Document your thoughts without forcing conclusions
Week 2: Design Your Monthly Review Framework
Identify 5-7 key metrics that serve as leading indicators for your business
Create a simple dashboard to track these metrics
Schedule your first monthly review for week 4
Begin collecting the data you'll need for this review
Week 3: Deepen Your Weekly Practice
Conduct your second weekly reflection session
This time, add the question: "What am I avoiding thinking about?"
Notice which areas of your business you naturally resist examining
Document any insights or potential changes
Week 4: Conduct Your First Monthly Review
Block 4 hours for your first monthly business review
Analyze your key metrics and look for patterns
Review progress on strategic initiatives from your weekly sessions
Identify 1-3 adjustments based on your findings
Schedule your next month's review and your first quarterly offsite
The key to making this work isn't perfection—it's consistency. A good strategic cadence performed regularly trumps a perfect process done sporadically.
The Hidden Benefits of a Strategic Cadence
The obvious benefit of implementing a strategic thinking cadence is better business decisions. But there are several less obvious advantages that may be even more valuable:
1. Mental Clarity and Reduced Anxiety
When you regularly step back from operations to think strategically, you develop what psychologists call a "sense of coherence"—the feeling that you understand what's happening around you and can influence it meaningfully.
This reduces the background anxiety that plagues most entrepreneurs and improves decision-making across all areas of your business.
2. Enhanced Team Performance
Teams perform better when they understand the why behind their work, not just the what. A strategic cadence creates natural opportunities to share context and meaning, which improves alignment, motivation, and initiative.
Even if you're a solopreneur, contractors and partners will deliver better results when they understand your strategic direction.
3. Opportunity Recognition
Most opportunities don't announce themselves with flashing lights. They emerge gradually as patterns in data, customer feedback, or market shifts.
A strategic cadence trains your mind to recognize these patterns before your competitors do, creating first-mover advantages in your market.
4. Business Durability
The companies that survive decades aren't just the ones with the best products or the most funding. They're the ones with leaders who identify existential threats early and adapt accordingly.
Grove called this "paranoia," but it's really just the result of regular, disciplined strategic thinking.
The Compounding Return on Strategic Thinking
Let me leave you with a final thought.
Strategic thinking isn't just another business practice. It's a compounding investment that pays dividends for years.
Each strategic insight builds on previous ones. Each correct resource allocation creates opportunities for future allocations. Each capability you develop becomes the foundation for new capabilities.
This compounding effect is why some businesses seem to effortlessly outmaneuver their competition year after year. It's not luck or genius. It's the accumulated advantage of regular, disciplined strategic thinking.
Andy Grove built Intel from a small memory chip manufacturer into one of the most valuable companies on earth through this approach. He didn't just work harder than his competitors—he thought more clearly, more systematically, and more regularly about the fundamental questions facing his business.
You can do the same, starting today.
Not by trying to copy Intel's specific strategies, but by implementing the cadence that produced those strategies.
Block that first 90-minute weekly reflection session.
Schedule your monthly review.
Schedule your quarterly offsite.
Then protect these commitments like your business depends on them.
Because it does.
Thank you for reading.
– Scott