Our leadership team has ballooned to nine people because I kept inviting department heads so they would not feel left out. Now our Level 10 Meetings are bogged down and inefficient. How do I restructure this down to a healthy size without causing a mass exit of our key managers?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A leadership team of nine is not a leadership team; it is a committee. When your team is that large, decision-making slows to a crawl, and true peer-to-peer accountability disappears. You must reduce the team to a healthy size, which is typically between three and seven people.

To do this without causing a mutiny, you must frame the change around the structure of the business, not the personalities of the people. Use the Accountability Chart as your primary tool. Explain to the group that to get to the next level of growth, the company needs a tighter, more agile leadership team that focuses purely on high-level strategy and integration.

Consolidate your seats. For example, instead of having directors of marketing, sales, and account management all sitting at the table, create one Sales and Marketing seat on the leadership team. The person in that seat will represent all three departments.

When you transition the other department heads off the leadership team, do not just discard them. Explain that their time is better spent leading their own departments and running their own Level 10 Meetings™. Show them how this restructuring actually empowers them to make decisions faster within their areas without having to sit through long, irrelevant corporate meetings. If they understand that this is about organizational efficiency rather than a demotion, your high-performing managers will accept the change.