Reveal Your Team's Optempo to Align Expectations
How to identify, communicate, and plan around the natural ebbs and flows of your team's year
Every team has a rhythm, even if no one’s named it yet.
Some teams sprint through spring launches and coast into summer. Others grind hard in Q1, then move at half-speed in July. And many lurch unpredictably from Crisco watermelon to Crisco watermelon, wondering why everything feels harder than it needs to be.
What’s often missing isn’t capacity or clarity. It’s cadence.
More specifically, it’s an awareness of your team’s optempo.
What Is Optempo and Why Does Seasonality Matter?
Optempo is a military term, short for operations tempo. It’s the cadence, speed, and intensity at which operations move, and it can and does change based on a number of factors, like team readiness, leadership, culture, seasonality, demand, and so on.
Sometimes the optempo shifts are obvious: tax firms ramp up in Q1, education orgs decelerate in summer, and nonprofits push hard at year-end.
But for many teams, the shifts and rhythms may be less drastic and more gradual. They’re based on things like:
recurring project cycles,
grant or funding schedules,
client onboarding patterns,
personal or cultural observances,
and even regional weather.
When teams don’t talk about these shifts, friction creeps in. Work starts to feel harder than it should. Leaders wonder why no one seems motivated in July. Teammates quietly feel like they’re failing when their energy doesn’t match the moment.
It’s not always a capacity problem. Sometimes, it’s a tempo mismatch.
A Leader’s Map Isn’t Enough
I recently worked with a leader who was deep in one of her organization’s busiest seasons. She was feeling exasperated — her team just wasn’t bringing the urgency she expected.
But after a few minutes, it became clear: she had the map. Her team didn’t.
She’d lived through this seasonal cycle for years. For her, the pattern was obvious.
But for newer teammates, it wasn’t a pattern. It was a surprise.
She hadn’t made the rhythm visible. And without that, her expectations came across as sudden shifts in tone or pressure.
That’s a recipe for disconnect.
Which is why we created a simple tool to help.