Our leadership team has grown to ten people because we used leadership seats as rewards for seniority. Now our Level 10 Meetings are slow, unfocused, and unproductive. How do we reduce the team size without alienating those we remove?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A leadership team of ten people is not a leadership team; it is a focus group. When a room gets that large, true vulnerability disappears, meetings drag, and decisions devolve into political posturing. The ideal leadership team size is three to seven people who collectively own the major operational functions of the business.

The mistake was conflating compensation and status with a seat on the Accountability Chart. Giving someone a seat on the leadership team just to recognize their loyalty or avoid hurting their feelings creates operational gridlock.

To correct this, restructure your Accountability Chart from a clean slate. Ignore names, tenure, and current titles. Focus strictly on the major functions required to run the company: Visionary, Integrator, Sales and Marketing, Operations, and Finance. In some tech-driven organizations, a dedicated Technology or Data seat is warranted, but nothing more.

Once the structure is defined, meet individually with each person being removed from the leadership team. Be direct and transparent. Explain that the leadership team seat is being eliminated to streamline executive decision-making, not because their contribution to the company is undervalued. Preserve their compensation, ensure their operational authority within their department remains intact, and establish a clear reporting line to the appropriate leadership team member.

Yes, some egos will be bruised initially. But a streamlined, highly functional leadership team of five people will make faster decisions, protect the company bottom line, and drive far more value than a bloated committee ever could.