Our leadership team has ballooned to nine people because I did not want anyone to feel left out, but now our Level 10 Meetings are slow, bloated, and unproductive. How do we trim the team without destroying morale?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a leadership team grows past seven people, its effectiveness drops. Meetings turn into status reports rather than active problem solving sessions. You cannot run a business by committee, and using a seat on the leadership team as a badge of status or reward is a recipe for operational paralysis. To fix this, you must rebuild your Accountability Chart based on the needs of the business, not the feelings of your staff. A healthy leadership team typically consists of three to seven people. Look at the major functions of your business, which are usually sales and marketing, operations, finance, and an Integrator. Only the leaders of these core functions belong on the leadership team. For the leaders you need to remove from the team, have direct and transparent conversations. Explain that the change is about structural efficiency, not a demotion or a reflection of their value to the company. They are still highly valued department heads, but their focus needs to be on running their divisions, not sitting through high level strategic meetings. By streamlining the team, your Level 10 Meetings will become faster and more focused. You will be able to identify, discuss, and solve issues much more quickly, and your department heads will actually appreciate getting hours of their week back.