How to Build the Right Leadership Team for the Next Stage of Growth
At some point in the growth of a business, the leadership team that got you here stops being the leadership team that gets you there. This isn’t a commentary on the quality of the people. It’s a commentary on fit — whether the right people are in the right seats for where the business is going, not just where it has been.
Slade McLendon learned this the hard way. In a recent episode of The Fast Slow Motion Podcast: How a Third-Generation Family Business Built Something Worth Passing Down, he shared something that takes real honesty to say out loud: when Sunbelt Fire started implementing EOS, not one member of that original leadership team is on the executive team today. Some are still in the company. They weren’t bad people, they were just not in the right seats for the next stage of growth.
Building the right leadership team isn’t a one-time event. It’s an ongoing process of clarity, honesty, and willingness to make hard calls.
Right People, Right Seats
EOS uses a simple but demanding standard for evaluating people: do they share the company’s core values, and do they have the capacity to do what the role actually requires? Both conditions have to be true. A person who fits the culture but can’t do the job creates a different kind of problem than a person who can do the job but doesn’t fit the culture. Neither works long term.
The “right seat” part is where most businesses struggle. It requires a clear picture of what each role actually demands, not what it has historically demanded, but what the business needs from that role now. As a company grows, the requirements of leadership positions change. A sales leader who excelled at closing deals personally may not have the skills to build and manage a sales team. An operations manager who was perfect at twenty employees may be out of depth at seventy-five.
Recognizing this isn’t a judgment. It’s a requirement of honest leadership.
The Accountability Chart
One of the most useful tools EOS provides is the accountability chart, which is distinct from a traditional org chart. Where an org chart shows reporting lines, an accountability chart shows who is responsible for what outcomes. Each seat has a clear set of responsibilities, and each person either has the capacity to own those responsibilities or they don’t.
Slade mentions his accountability chart is visible in his office. It’s not a wall decoration. It’s a working document that reflects how the business actually runs and where the gaps are. When the chart is honest, it surfaces misalignment that would otherwise stay hidden until it becomes a problem.
Building an accountability chart for the first time is often uncomfortable. It requires leaders to look at their current team and ask, for each seat, whether the person in it is actually the right fit. The answer isn’t always yes, and knowing that changes how decisions get made.
How Sunbelt Fire Restructured Leadership
As Slade got clearer on where Sunbelt Fire needed to go, he moved away from the traditional visionary and single integrator model that EOS describes and built something more suited to the complexity of his business. Rather than one integrator, he developed four: one over sales and revenue, one over operations, one over finance, and one over organizational development.
Each of those leaders owns their domain. Each is accountable to the overall vision without needing Slade as the intermediary. Together they form what Slade calls the key player group, a leadership team that meets regularly, operates from shared goals, and has the authority to make decisions within their areas.
That structure took years to build. It required finding people who fit the culture, fit the seats, and had the capacity to grow into the role the business needed. Some of those people came from outside. Some developed internally. None of it happened quickly.
The Role of Organizational Development
One of the most intentional additions Slade made to the executive structure was a seat specifically focused on people and organizational development. This isn’t a traditional HR function, though HR reports through it. The seat is designed to develop the people in the business, not just manage their employment.
Slade describes wanting someone in that role who helps leaders become the best version of themselves, personally and professionally. That includes succession planning, leadership development, and a chaplain program through Marketplace Chaplains. The goal is a business where people are genuinely cared for and genuinely developed, not just deployed.
This kind of investment in organizational development is rare in businesses of Sunbelt Fire’s size. It reflects a conviction that the health of the team and the health of the business are the same thing. You can’t build a great company on a struggling workforce, and you can’t build leaders without deliberate effort to develop them.
Hiring for the Next Stage, Not the Last One
One of the practical shifts that comes with building the right leadership team is changing how you hire. Slade describes a hiring process where he is the last person to interview, not the first. He’s not selling candidates on why they should come to Sunbelt Fire. He’s giving them multiple opportunities to decide for themselves whether it’s the right fit.
That approach reflects a conviction that great leadership teams are built on genuine alignment, not recruited enthusiasm. Someone who joins because they were sold on the opportunity is a different hire than someone who joins because they genuinely believe in the mission and can see themselves thriving in the culture. The business can tell the difference, even if it takes a little time.
For a business at the next stage of growth, this kind of intentionality in hiring isn’t a luxury. It’s a requirement. Every seat on the leadership team has an outsized impact on the rest of the organization. Getting those seats right is some of the most important work a CEO can do.
For more on how Slade built the leadership team at Sunbelt Fire, listen to The Fast Slow Motion Podcast episode: How a Third-Generation Family Business Built Something Worth Passing Down.
Listen to the full podcast episode here.