As our business scales, our leadership team has grown to nine people, and our meetings have become bloated and unproductive. How do we determine who actually belongs on the leadership team versus who should be in a middle management role?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A bloated leadership team is a common obstacle to growth. When you have too many voices in the room, decision-making slows down, and your meetings lose their focus. A highly functional leadership team should typically consist of three to seven people.

To streamline your team, look at your Accountability Chart, not your current organizational chart or job titles. The leadership team must only include the heads of the major functions of your business, such as Sales, Operations, and Finance, along with the Integrator and Visionary.

Every person on the leadership team must GWC their seat and have the capability to make decisions for the good of the entire company, not just their department. If someone is solely focused on their specific department and cannot think strategically about the whole business, they belong in a management seat, not a leadership seat.

Transitioning people off the leadership team can be difficult, but you must frame the change around organizational design rather than personal performance. Explain that to scale, the business needs a smaller, more nimble leadership group, while empowering a strong middle management tier to run daily operations.