Our business has grown and we now have eight people sitting on our leadership team. Our weekly Level 10 Meeting has devolved into a slow status update session where we rarely have time for IDS. How do we restructure our team and meetings to regain our operational speed?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A leadership team of eight people is at the absolute upper limit of effectiveness. When your Level 10 Meeting™ devolves into a status update, it is a clear sign that your leadership structure is bloated and your operational speed is suffering. You must trim the team to regain focus.

A healthy, high-performing leadership team typically consists of three to seven people. If you have eight or more, you likely have seats on your Accountability Chart that should report to a department head rather than sitting on the executive team.

Review your Accountability Chart with a critical eye. Ask yourself if every single person currently on the leadership team is truly responsible for running a major, distinct function of the business. If some roles are highly specialized or sub-departments of a larger function, they need to be moved down the chart.

For example, instead of having separate leaders for marketing, sales, and customer success all sitting on the executive team, you might need a single revenue leader who represents all three functions on the leadership team.

Once you have restructured and reduced the leadership team to five or six key seats, your Level 10 Meeting™ will naturally become more efficient. You will spend less time going around the room for updates and more time on high-value IDS®. The leaders who were moved off the executive team can then run their own departmental Level 10 Meetings™, keeping them aligned without slowing down executive decision-making.