Our leadership team has ballooned to nine people because we wanted to make everyone feel included, but our weekly Level 10 Meetings have become bloated and we rarely get anything solved. How do we trim the team down without triggering a mass exit?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A leadership team of nine people is not a leadership team; it is a committee. When a team gets that large, healthy debate becomes impossible, meetings run long, and decision-making slows to a crawl. The ideal size for a highly functional leadership team is three to seven people.

To fix this, you must redesign your Accountability Chart from scratch. Forget about the people currently in the seats and focus entirely on the major functions your business needs to run. Typically, this is Sales and Marketing, Operations, and Finance, led by an Integrator and a Visionary.

Once you have built the right structure, you will likely find that several of your current leadership team members belong on the departmental level rather than the leadership level. They are still highly valued employees, but their daily presence is not required to run the overall company.

When you roll out the new structure, handle the transition with extreme transparency. Explain that this change is about operational efficiency and decision-making speed, not a demotion. Show them how the new structure allows them to focus on leading their specific departments. Emphasize that their new reporting structure will actually give them more clarity and support. If someone threatens to quit because their ego cannot handle a more focused role, they are not aligned with your core values anyway.