Before you run the company in founder mode, or explain it to the board, war-game the cadence. Write down which reviews you will attend in person, how often, how deep you go in each, which areas you will leave to their owners, and what the board sees between meetings. Paste the cadence, your last four weeks of meetings, the board's reporting expectations, and notes on where leaders feel second-guessed into one request. Instruct Pingpong to flag reviews with no stated purpose, deep dives with no end date, and board updates that list activity without showing progress against plan. Review your written answers in a second round.
This page is for chief executives who have chosen to get closer to the work, often after a missed quarter, and must explain to the board what that changes. Who decides what is covered in war-game a delegation framework before the board asks who decides. Executive starting points live under Pingpong for executives.
The rhythm, written down
- Weekly: one product or customer review where the chief executive goes deep, chosen in advance and named on the calendar, plus a short executive meeting for decisions.
- Every two weeks: skip-level time, with each leader told what came up.
- Monthly: a business review on a fixed set of numbers, the same ones every month.
- Quarterly: a written memo to the board and a reset of where the chief executive's depth goes next.
- Left alone: the areas the chief executive will not dive into this quarter, said out loud so their owners can plan.
Most cadences skip the last item. Leaders read it more closely than any other line.
Depth has a cost
Founder mode works when the chief executive's attention lands on the few places where it changes the outcome. It sours when attention moves without warning. A vice president who learns from a junior engineer that the chief executive rewrote a spec overnight stops making calls and starts waiting. Within a month the team routes everything upward and the areas meant to run on their own slip. Announcing each dive in advance, with a start and an end, keeps the depth and removes the surprise.
A worked example
This example is illustrative and does not describe a customer. A 200-person software company has missed its last two product deadlines. The chief executive tells the board they will run the next two quarters in founder mode. The board chair asks to see the plan. Two directors privately worry about losing the head of product.
The chief executive pastes the cadence, four weeks of calendar, the last two board updates, and notes from two leaders who felt bypassed.
A useful pass finds 31 recurring meetings a week, 19 of them attended by the chief executive, and only 4 tied to the two late products. The plan says "deep on product" with no end date and no named areas. Sales and finance have no stated level of involvement, so both leaders now bring everything for approval. The board updates list 14 initiatives, all marked green, with no comparison to plan. The head of product does not know which reviews the chief executive will run.
The revised cadence cuts the chief executive's recurring meetings to 9. The chief executive joins reviews of the two late products twice a week for one quarter, and names sales and finance as left alone apart from the monthly review. The head of product co-runs those product reviews and agrees to the end date. The board gets a one-page monthly note: the two product milestones against plan, three company numbers, where the chief executive's time went, and one thing that went wrong. At the end of the quarter, the chief executive and the board chair decide whether to extend founder mode on product, move it elsewhere, or end it.
Signs the cadence is vague
- Ownership questions: leaders ask "is this yours or mine?" more than once a week.
- Waiting: decisions sit until a meeting the chief executive might attend.
- Board updates: they grow longer every month and say less.
- No end date: nobody can say when the current deep dive finishes.
A request you can copy
Below are my proposed cadence, four weeks of meetings, recent board updates, and notes from leaders who feel bypassed. List each recurring meeting with its purpose and flag any without one. Compare where my time goes with our priorities. Flag areas where my involvement is undefined. Check whether the board update shows progress against plan. Suggest an end date and review point for each deep dive. Stop there so we can answer in writing, then review our answers.
How Pingpong runs the review
The web review app sends your request through several models in order. Each later model receives the original request and every earlier answer, with instructions to assess the work so far. For the steps inside the app, see running your first review.
What a model can't review
A model cannot tell whether your leaders will welcome you closer to the work or quietly start taking recruiter calls. It can show where the cadence leaves people guessing. Talking with them is yours.
When the decision goes to the board, see war-game a decision before the board meeting. More guides live under work decisions before you commit.