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Leaders Letter Newsletter

Leaders Letter 193 – Is It Time To Reshuffle Your Executive Team?

Dear leaders, how are you and your managers and management team doing? 

It is business week 8 (where has 2024 gone already) and typically you get a pretty good baseline of how things are going, how the business is shaping up and how your team have performed. 

One question that is often asked around now is: 

How do I know when it is time to review your leadership team? 

And connected follow-up question: 

» Is it time to review my management team around you (those who report to you)?

The big question you have to ask yourself is:
How are you performing and how are the relationships and dynamics helping the team and the company progress?  

You might be in one of three situations: 

  1. Leaders like their colleagues but don’t love their output. 
  2. Leaders dislike their colleagues and the team around them but they perform.
  3. Leaders wouldn’t mind if they left and it wouldn’t impact performance. 

If you land with option 1 or option 3 you are ultimately in a place to consider performance plans or a reshuffle. 

Letting go of people you dislike but perform within their role is what makes or breaks leaders and tests your executive chops. 

The Cost & Effects Of Hiring & Firing

Hiring and firing is a core part of being a leader and many struggle with hiring replacements, understanding the demands of their org and then replacing almost like for like or go to an extreme opposite and miss the subcultural impact. 

The Caretaker AKA The Number 2: Others thrive in the firing but the replacements are often not lined up and can take a long time to replace, you are then expecting someone internally to step up and often this will see performance stay as is or improve. 

You are then left in a place with a number 2 who will ultimately have two decisions to make: 

1/Is this number two role enough 

2/ Will this new boss feel threatened and can I learn anything from them to progress my career further? 

Often the ‘Number 2’ will move on and you will be left with a hole and a six to twelve-month window where you will have instability and turbulence.  

Middle management is a tricky place to operate and often when you are in the mid to senior end of your career a new boss coming in to replace your old C-Suite boss is a big swift and has months’ worth of impact on you and the team around you. 

Executive Changes = 24 Months Of Hard Change 

If you notice what happens in many companies, a new CEO comes in, assesses their colleagues and their board and the supporting management team and then makes changes, some make sweeping changes and bring in their people, while others refresh core areas and often make the management team smaller. 

This approach is often about the CEO being successful first not always directly correlated to the business being successful. 

10 Leadership Levels Questions To Consider

There is no one size fits all but here are 10 important themes to consider and bake into your plan (sidenote – always check with legal and HR to ensure you have taken the right legal steps to protect you, the company and the individuals you might be letting go). 

  1. Any Move Is A 2-Year Bet: Don’t make big and rash decisions if you haven’t planned out the next 2 years 
  2. Identify The Right Interim Lead: The next question to ask and answer is: Is there is someone within the team who can and will step up or will there be another exec who is tasked to step up and run dual areas
  3. Thrive Vs Chaos: Some departments thrive in change, while others don’t. Chaos and confusion are never tolerated – find out which the departments are and how you remove any confusion with a timeline of next steps and actions 
  4. Back Up Plans: If you are an exec and department lead understand how you are reshaping a team/discipline lead will impact the business for the next 12 months and have backup plans for additional support, hiring consultants, agencies or reshaping to adding more headcount under the original level will help to get back into the driving seat. You will naturally need to step up and have relationship managers with external vendors to own the alteration  
  5. Sub Culture & Cultural Impact: Culture can be made and broken by hiring and firing mistakes, hiring is more important than firing, if you hire badly you have six months to understand their capabilities and influence and then be confident they are right for the next 12 months 
  6. Popularity: Popular employees being let go sends ripples through businesses, from gossip to direct questions about them and their performance. Understand the impact of these decisions and how you will address this 
  7. Comms Plan & Plan Execution: Communication is key, what you say to the key member of staff you are hiring and firing is critical it stays between you.
    1. Welcoming new senior staff or a shift in operating models requires a well-thought-through comms plan. Time and energy are critical here 
    2. You will need to have a company-wide notice to explain the reasons and what the future looks like clearly. Over-communication and over-sharing lead to questions and a reduction in confidence 
  8. Difference Between Small Biz & Large Orgs: If you are looking to make many changes inside a small business it will reshape quickly, if you are in a mid-sized business it takes longer to understand the impact, in large and enterprise businesses it can be 9-12 months for the effects to come out in the wash 
  9. Talk Of The Town? Big exec firing will lead to external questions and will be the talk of recruitment/headhunter firms, C-Suite groups and industry press. Knowing how to frame the layoff and reshuffle externally is as critical as internal comms. Know internal comms will be shared and screenshotted to be shared across social media and chat apps 
  10. Day 0 Influence: If you want to restart a department’s performance you will have to think about the executive in charge and their relationships and influence over their department. If they have influence and sway you will need to understand how to replicate this, if they don’t think and plan about how you will restart from day 0 of letting them go. 

This week’s focus action is to review if you should reshuffle your exec team, review the list of exec hiring and firing notes and make an action plan on who, what, when, why and how to move forward with reshuffling your executive team. 

Best of luck this week and if you are in doubt ask yourself, if this person were to leave on their own terms what would the plan be, versus letting them go as the leader? 

Thanks and have a great week,

Danny Denhard