One issue most business founders’ wrestle with is the optimum size for leadership teams.
We find when clients implement EOS, the structure of the leadership team changes about 20% of the time.
It is important to set it up to manage business growth, considering what the leadership team should look like six-12 months in the future.
Here we look at how three client’s leadership teams changed while they were implementing EOS.
An unaligned team
One client’s team went from 11 to six leaders.
The chief executive realised he had some of the wrong people in place. They had a lot of people with titles, but the team wasn’t strong and aligned.
While setting up the right structure for the team, during the first EOS Focus Day, we hypothetically fired everyone (no egos, personalities or personal agendas)and asked them to hover above the business so they can see the big picture and advise it on the right structure for the leadership team.
They structured the company with a visionary, an integrator, and four departments: sales and marketing, commercial, operations and finance.
Five seats were integrated into these four departments. One member of staff left, and others took on other roles in the business.
Over a period of 18 months, two members of the newly structured team changed – one left and another stepped down from the leadership team and took a position in his department because he didn’t think he could deliver what was required as the lead.
Lack of strategic conversations
After this client initially structured their organisation with eight leaders, they found that they were not having the strategic high level conversations which were needed to at that level.
Two years into the EOS process, they had an open honest conversation during a quarterly session and decided to restructured the leadership team from eight to four seats.
The change meant that the head of marketing and head of HR reported directly to the CEO and were no longer on the leadership team. The head of health and safety reported to operations, and IT reported to finance.
Watch our video: rightsizing your leadership team
The four person leadership team found they could have the right conversations at the right strategic level and were able to make big picture strategic decisions to direct and lead the organisation in a more effective way.
Five leaders, five seats
This client started with four leaders filling five seats: a visionary who also sat in sales and marketing, an integrator, a head of operations and head of finance.
The operations director was let go due to lack of performance, so the integrator stepped in to run that department.
Within the next 12 months, the company promoted someone internally to be head of sales and marketing, and hired an external person to run operations. This meant they had five leaders filling five seats.
Conclusion
Each business is unique, so we believe the leaders of each one need to take a strategic look at their leadership team structure and decide how many seats is right for their situation.
It is important to structure leadership teams so they can manage the growth of the business.
For more information about how to structure your leadership team contact us on +44 (0)7795 667480.