Our leadership team has slowly swollen to ten people because we kept giving seats to department heads to make them feel valued, and now our meetings are completely bogged down. How do we shrink the team back to a functional size without people quitting?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A ten-person leadership team is not an executive team. It is a town hall. Large groups naturally default to superficial status updates and consensus paralysis because real ideological debate is impossible with ten people in a room.

A functional, cohesive leadership team should consist of three to seven people. To fix your team, you must decouple organizational value and compensation from having a seat at the leadership table.

Start by resetting the Accountability Chart based on the needs of the business, not the feelings of current employees. Look at the business as if it were a blank slate. Most entrepreneurial companies require only five core leadership functions:
- Visionary
- Integrator
- Sales and Marketing
- Operations
- Finance

Take the specialized department heads (such as IT, HR, or regional managers) and place their seats underneath the appropriate functional leadership seat. For example, HR and IT often report to the Integrator or Operations.

Communicate the restructure directly to the individuals stepping off the leadership team before announcing it broadly. Frame the change around operational focus. Explain that their specialized role is critical to execution, but dragging them into weekly company-wide governance distracts them from driving their department results. Ensure their compensation, autonomy, and title remain intact.

Some managers may struggle with wounded pride. Stand firm. You cannot sacrifice enterprise traction and decision-making speed to protect individual egos. The leaders who truly care about company success will embrace having more time to lead their direct teams.