What's your your CEO rhythm? Designing meetings, cadences and decisions
- Hans Smellinckx
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Intro
As CEO, your calendar is a strategy document.
Not the one you present to your board.The one you live every week.
If you lead a SME or scale-up in Belgium, the Netherlands or elsewhere in Europe, you probably know the feeling:
back-to-back meetings,
constant interruptions,
little time to think,
a sense that you are busy but not always on the right things.
In “100 Days to Make Your Mark as a CEO”, I encourage CEOs to look at their rhythm with the same seriousness as they look at their P&L.
Because your rhythm determines:
what gets attention,
how fast decisions move,
how aligned your team stays.
What is a CEO rhythm?
Your CEO rhythm is the combination of:
recurring meetings (weekly, monthly, quarterly),
how decisions move between those meetings,
how you reserve time for customers, thinking, and your own energy.
It’s the operating system under your leadership.
Without a conscious rhythm, you get:
duplicate meetings,
unclear ownership,
slow or inconsistent decisions,
a calendar that runs you instead of the other way around.
Step 1: Map what exists today
Before you design something new, you need to see the current system.
For 2–3 weeks, observe:
Which recurring meetings do you attend?(leadership, sales, operations, project, board, 1:1s…)
For each one, ask:
What is the purpose? (inform, discuss, decide, coordinate?)
Who is there?
What decisions are actually made?
Where do topics bounce from meeting to meeting without resolution?
This simple mapping, which you can do for a SME in Brussels or a scale-up in Amsterdam, often reveals:
meetings with overlapping purpose,
gaps (no forum where certain decisions can be made),
your own presence in places where you add little value.
Step 2: Define the critical meetings that run the company
For most SMEs and scale-ups, a solid rhythm doesn’t need dozens of forums.You need a clear backbone.
Typical elements:
Weekly leadership team meeting
Focus: company-wide priorities, major risks, key decisions.
Output: clear actions and owners.
Monthly performance review
Focus: financials, commercial performance, key KPIs.
Output: decisions on course corrections.
Quarterly strategy check-in
Focus: are we still on track with our strategic choices?
Output: adjust priorities if needed.
Regular 1:1s with your direct reports
Focus: their role, obstacles, development, alignment.
Depending on your business, you might add:
an operations or delivery meeting,
a product/innovation forum.
The key is that each has a distinct purpose and owner.
Step 3: Decide where you need to be as CEO
As CEO, you don’t have to be in everything.
In your first or next 100 days, ask:
Which meetings require my presence for:
setting direction,
taking final decisions,
signalling importance?
Which meetings can I:
attend less frequently,
only receive outputs from,
or step out of completely?
A simple rule of thumb:
If your presence doesn’t change the quality of the discussion or decision,you probably don’t need to be there every time.
Freeing up even 10–20% of your week gives you space for:
customers,
thinking and synthesis,
your own resilience.
Step 4: Clarify how decisions flow
A frequent problem in Belgian and Dutch SMEs and scale-ups is that decisions:
are made informally,
are not written down,
get questioned again in the next meeting.
You can improve this by:
being explicit: “We are deciding X now.”
assigning one owner per decision;
documenting key decisions in a simple log (even a shared document).
Also define:
Which topics must go to the leadership team?
Which topics can be decided in a smaller forum?
When does something need your explicit approval?
This reduces noise and increases trust.
Step 5: Protect thinking time and white space
In “100 Days to Make Your Mark as a CEO”, mental space is not a luxury. It’s part of the job.
In your rhythm, deliberately block:
1–2 slots per week for deep work (no meetings);
time for customers or field visits;
recovery blocks (sport, walks, no-screen time).
If you don’t protect this in your calendar, it will be eaten by “urgent” topics that often aren’t strategic.
How this looks in practice
For a CEO of a SME in Antwerp or a scale-up in Utrecht, a redesigned rhythm might look like:
Monday morning: 90 minutes leadership team (priorities & decisions)
Fixed half-day per week: customer visits or external meetings
One afternoon per week: no meetings – thinking & project work
Friday: 45 minutes weekly review and planning for next week
Plus:
Monthly: performance review
Quarterly: strategy and team offsite-style session
Is this perfect? No.Is it better than a chaotic, reactive week? Definitely.
How I help CEOs design a workable rhythm
I support CEOs and leadership teams of SMEs and scale-ups in Belgium, the Netherlands and across Europe to:
map their current leadership rhythm,
design a simpler, more effective cadence,
and align meetings, decisions and communication.
Because a good 100-day plan is useless if it lives in a deck,and your weekly rhythm pulls you in a completely different direction.
If your calendar currently feels like a random collection of obligations, that’s not a moral failing. It’s a design problem. And design problems can be solved.
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