Our leadership team has ballooned to nine people because department heads felt insulted when left out, but our meetings have become unwieldy and slow. How do we trim the leadership team down to a core group without destroying morale?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A nine-person leadership team is not an executive team; it is a town hall. Large groups destroy meeting velocity, encourage posturing, and dilute accountability.

A healthy, high-functioning leadership team almost always consists of three to seven people. When an owner expands the table to avoid hurting feelings, they sacrifice operational clarity for emotional comfort.

Trim the team cleanly by applying structural discipline:

- Rebuild the Accountability Chart from scratch: Remove all existing names and design the right structure for the business over the next six to twelve months. In most companies, this requires a Visionary, an Integrator, and three to five seats covering Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Finance. That is your true leadership team.
- Separate rank from executive governance: Explain to the organization that sitting on the leadership team is not a status symbol, an award for loyalty, or a salary band. It is a functional seat responsible for enterprise-wide strategy and cross-departmental integration.
- Create a departmental management tier: Department heads who do not sit on the core leadership team should lead their own departmental Level 10 Meetings and own departmental Scorecards. They report directly to their executive seat holder on the Accountability Chart.

Deliver the news directly in one-on-one conversations before making an announcement. Explain that narrowing the executive table allows leaders to focus on deep department execution rather than sitting in hours of high-level strategic debates. Rip the band-aid off immediately.