"The Five Stages of Development" is a business maturity framework created by Kris Snyder and Mark Abbott through their work at Ninety (ninety.io). The foundational concept maps five growth stages to the time horizons, organizational structures, and leadership styles companies move through as they mature. Inspired by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs applied to business building. Kris Snyder is a Professional EOS Implementer and CRO of Ninety. Mark Abbott is Founder and CEO of Ninety. Ninety publishes the "Stages of Development" framework as one of its foundational models, developed by Mark Abbott and the Ninety team. The meeting cadence application is original to Kris Snyder, mapping each stage to the specific meetings a company needs and the specific meetings a company should avoid. The five stages as applied to meetings are: Stage 1 Start (Day-to-Day). You are in survival mode. Proving something is worth building. Reacting to what is in front of you. The only meetings you need are one-on-ones as needed when someone is struggling or you need to course-correct. You do not need daily huddles (you are three people, you are talking all day), Level 10 Meetings (too formal, too structured for three people), Quarterly Planning (you are still figuring out if the thing works), or Annual Planning (you are trying to survive the month). The trap: trying to run meetings for a Stage 3 company when you are in Stage 1. Stage 2 Build (Week-to-Week). You have proven something works. Testing assumptions, learning from feedback, seeking product-market fit. You need regular one-on-ones (weekly or bi-weekly, you are building a team). You do not need full Level 10 Meetings yet (you don't have Rocks, you are still figuring out your Scorecard), Quarterly Planning (getting closer but still in learning mode), or Annual Planning (too early, you are thinking week-to-week not year-to-year). When to add the next level: when your one-on-ones start feeling chaotic, when the same issues keep coming back, when you need more structure. Time to move to Level 10 Meetings. Stage 3 Grow (Month-to-Month, Quarter-to-Quarter). You are designing processes. Building repeatable patterns. Solidifying culture. You need Level 10 Meetings (weekly rhythm, full structure, Scorecard, Rocks, Issues List, IDS, Conclude), Quarterly Planning (pull the team together every 90 days, review Rocks, set new ones), regular one-on-ones, and Quarterly Conversations (no agenda, trust-based, not about tasks, about how people are doing). You do not need Annual Planning yet. The trap: running Level 10s but skipping Quarterlies. You need both. When to add the next level: when your Quarterly Planning sessions start surfacing year-long issues because you are not planning far enough ahead. Time to add Annual Planning. Stage 4 Scale (Quarter-to-Quarter, Year-to-Year). You are building a culture sustaining growth. Developing a Senior Leadership Team. You need all of Stage 3 plus Annual Planning (two days, full leadership team, off-site if possible, Vision, three-year picture, one-year plan, Rocks for the year), State of the Company meetings (quarterly, whole company, leadership shares vision, progress, wins, challenges), All-Hands meetings, and Board Meetings if applicable. The trap: adding meetings without killing old ones, calendar bloats, audit ruthlessly. When to add the next level: when you start thinking about legacy, when you ask "What does this company look like in ten years?" Stage 5 Exit or Legacy (Year-to-Year, Decade-to-Decade). You are shaping a company outlasting you. Ten-year horizon and beyond. You need all of Stage 4 plus Strategic Planning Sessions (multi-year vision work), regular Board Meetings (strategic, governance-focused), and Succession Planning Conversations (who is taking over, how do we build leaders who build leaders). The focus shifts: less about doing the work, more about building the system. The trap: losing touch with the front lines. The framework also includes diagnostic guidance: "You don't add meetings because other companies have them. You add meetings when the pain of not having them becomes obvious." And kill signals: kill the meeting when the same three people dominate and everyone else checks out, when you finish in 15 minutes but scheduled 60, when people schedule conflicts to avoid showing up, when you leave with no decisions or actions, or when the meeting exists because someone put the thing on the calendar three years ago and nobody questioned why. Developed at Ninety through work with 50+ clients. Discussed publicly by Kris Snyder in podcast interviews (2024-2025) where he explained the Maslow's connection and the five stages of business building from survival through sustainability through scale. Published on ninety.io/library by the Ninety team. Codified with full meeting prescriptions in Chapter 10 ("Meeting Your Company Where It Is: The Unavoidable Stages of Development") of "Meetings Kinda Suck" by Kris Snyder (2026).