Our business has scaled to fifty employees and our Integrator now has nine direct reports on the Accountability Chart, including sales, marketing, operations, finance, HR, and IT. Our weekly Level 10 Meetings are turning into status updates and our Integrator is drowning. How do we restructure our seats to reduce this operational span of control?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When your Integrator has nine direct reports, they are operating way past their cognitive and operational capacity. A healthy span of control for an Integrator is typically three to seven direct reports. Any more than that, and your weekly Level 10 Meetings will turn into administrative status updates rather than strategic problem-solving sessions.

To resolve this bottleneck, you must restructure your Accountability Chart to create intermediate leadership seats. Look at the major functions of your business and group similar activities under unified leaders.

For example, instead of having sales, marketing, and customer success all report directly to the Integrator, combine them under a single Revenue Director seat. This immediately reduces three direct reports to one. Similarly, you can group HR, IT, and office management under an Administration Director seat.

By creating these consolidated leadership roles, you free up your Integrator to focus on what they do best: integrating the major functions of the business and executing the V/TO.

This structural change will restore the health of your Level 10 Meetings, allowing your leadership team to focus on solving high-level issues rather than managing daily departmental fires.