Our leadership team is completely stuck trying to agree on the right structure for our marketing department, and our weekly Level 10 Meetings are getting derailed by endless debates over names. How do we step back and resolve this structural bottleneck objectively?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When your leadership team is stuck in endless debates about names and reporting lines, you have violated the rule of structure first, people second. To break this bottleneck, you must completely remove all names from the discussion.

Schedule a dedicated Thinking Time session for the leadership team. Use this time to look at the business from a thirty-thousand-foot view, focusing solely on your three-year picture and your V/TO.

Ask, what is the ideal structure for our marketing department to deliver on our growth goals, assuming we had to hire an entirely new team tomorrow? Define the seats and write five clear, high-level roles for each seat.

Once you have 100% agreement on the structure, only then do you bring names back into the conversation. Evaluate your current team members against the new seats using GWC. This disciplined process removes emotion and ensures you build a healthy, scalable organization.