# Quarterly Cadence — Captain's Template

> Drop this into `~/command/cadence/quarterly/template.md` in your Command Kit.

## 🧭 The strategic muscle

Quarterly is where the captain does the work nobody else can do: **set direction**.

## 📋 Quarterly checklist

- [ ] **Strategic review** — last quarter's bets vs results. Not "did we feel productive" — *did the metrics move*
- [ ] **Big milestones** — what 3 things would make this year a hit? Are we tracking?
- [ ] **OKR setting** — three quarterly objectives. Three key results each. No more
- [ ] **Kill-list** — what we stop doing. The hardest move
- [ ] **Compensation + role review** — pay, scope, growth conversations with team
- [ ] **Quarterly content brief** — the editorial calendar for the next 13 weeks

## 🎯 The five strategic questions

Take an afternoon. Voice-note answers if writing is too slow.

1. **What's working that we should double on?**
2. **What's not working that we should kill?**
3. **What did we learn that we hadn't planned to?**
4. **What customer / partner relationship deepened that we should invest in?**
5. **What did we say we'd do that we didn't — and what's the honest reason?**

## 🔁 What rolls up

Four quarters become the **yearly retrospective** — but only if each quarter was honest about what worked and what didn't. Quarterly is where the captain's strategic muscle gets used. Skip it and the year-end review becomes vibes.

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Maintained at `/log/cadence/quarterly` on max-ship.com.