Our leadership team has slowly grown to nine members as we added new department heads, but our weekly meetings have become bloated and we are struggling to make fast decisions. How do we reduce the size of our leadership team without making the departed members feel demoted or disengaged?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A leadership team of nine people is not a team; it is a committee. To maintain execution speed, your leadership team should ideally consist of three to seven people. When you exceed this number, your Level 10 Meeting™ sessions become inefficient, the IDS® process drags, and consensus replaces true leadership.

To restructure without triggering a cultural crisis, you must lead with the Accountability Chart. Do not make this about personalities or performance. Frame the restructure as a necessary evolution of the organization to support your next stage of growth.

First, review your organizational structure. Look at your core functions, which typically boil down to sales and marketing, operations, and finance. Combine related sub-departments under a single, major leadership seat. For example, instead of having separate directors of customer support, account management, and product delivery all sitting on the leadership team, roll those seats under a single Head of Operations seat.

Second, communicate the change clearly. Meet with the leaders who will be stepping off the leadership team individually. Explain that their daily operational expertise is too valuable to be spent in broad, strategic leadership meetings. Reassure them of their value and clarify that their new reporting line to a leadership team member will actually give them more direct support.

Third, protect their voice. Ensure their new department-level meetings run on the same Level 10 Meeting™ rhythm. This guarantees their strategic issues are still escalated to the leadership team weekly through their direct manager. Restructuring your team is not a demotion of people, but an optimization of your operational structure.