Our leadership team has ballooned to nine people because department heads feel excluded if they are not in the room, making our weekly Level 10 Meetings sluggish and indecisive. What is the process for cutting our leadership team down to a core group without destroying morale?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A leadership team of nine people is not a leadership team; it is a committee. Execution slows to a crawl when every operational issue requires unanimous consensus among nine individuals. The ideal leadership team consists of three to seven people who lead the core functions of the business.

To prune the team without destroying morale, ground the restructuring strictly in the Accountability Chart, not in personal status.

Start by taking people off the chart completely. Wipe the slate clean and look only at the major functions required to run your business: typically Visionary, Integrator, Sales and Marketing, Operations, and Finance. Define the five key roles for each major seat. When you redesign the organization around function rather than ego, it becomes obvious that middle managers and specialized department heads belong under the major seats, not on the executive leadership team.

Meet individually with the leaders who are stepping off the executive team. Be direct and transparent:
- Explain that the leadership team exists solely to steer company-wide strategy and enterprise health, not to reward tenure or validate departmental importance.
- Show them where their seat sits on the updated Accountability Chart and highlight how stepping off the leadership team frees their time to focus on executing departmental priorities.
- Establish a structured cascade meeting rhythm so these leaders receive clear, weekly updates from their direct executive and continue to have their departmental concerns brought into executive IDS.

If a manager threatens to quit simply because they no longer attend the weekly executive Level 10 Meeting, they value status over organizational health. Let the structure of the business dictate the seats.