Our leadership team has grown to nine people because we kept adding managers, but our meetings are sluggish and strategic debate has evaporated. How do we trim the executive team back to a lean group without alienating those we remove?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A nine-person leadership team is not an executive unit; it is a committee. When a leadership team exceeds five to seven people, meetings become performative updates, vulnerability vanishes, and real debate dies. You must cut the group back to the core seats that actually steer the enterprise.

Start by framing the change around structural architecture, not personal status. Convene the company and explain that the business has reached a level of scale that requires distinct governance tiers: a senior leadership team focused on enterprise strategy and quarterly traction, and a functional management tier focused on daily operational execution.

Rely on the standard Accountability Chart model: Visionary, Integrator, Sales and Marketing, Operations, and Finance. In specialized companies, you might have Technology or People, but you should never have nine direct seats at the executive table. Consolidate functional managers under those primary department heads.

Communicate the shift privately with the individuals being moved off the leadership team before any public announcement. Show them that stepping away from weekly executive meetings frees up ten to fifteen hours of their time to actually manage their departments and drive their Rocks.