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Forbes
6 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Smaller Teams Can Outperform Bigger Ones, But Only If These 5 Roles Are Covered
Economic uncertainty, investor scrutiny, and rising costs are forcing CEOs to look hard at their team structures. Cutting headcount is easy, but cutting headcount without cutting capability is not. Too often, companies slash positions based on titles, seniority, or salary size and end up with teams that are smaller, yes, but also slower, more fractured, and less able to deliver results. The secret to building a lean team that outperforms a larger one isn't about hiring 'smarter' people or asking everyone to 'step up.' It's about ensuring that every critical role your team needs to function at full speed is covered. And that means thinking about teams in terms of the five critical roles. The Five Roles Every High-Performing Team Needs After studying thousands of effective teams, from boardrooms to project task forces, five roles appear almost without exception: These aren't job titles; they're functions that must be fulfilled for the team to operate at its peak. One person might fill more than one role. Roles can shift depending on the project. But on a lean team, every single one must be covered. For CEOs, it's important to note that while it seems like you'd naturally fill the Director role, there are plenty of chief executives who prefer to play other parts. For example, the data from Leadership IQ's quiz 'What Type Of Team Player Are You?' shows that more than a few CEOs naturally gravitate to the Trailblazer role. Why Lean Teams Fail: The Missing Role Problem When companies downsize without mapping roles first, they almost always create role gaps, and those gaps can cripple execution. In our research, 97% of the most effective teams had all five roles covered. Among the worst teams, only 21% did. Here's what happens when one is missing: If Your Team Is Missing A Director: Decisions linger. Projects stall. Without someone willing to call the plays, especially when the choices are unpopular, the team ends up in endless debate. The result is missed opportunities and strategic drift. If Your Team Is Missing An Achiever: Ideas multiply, meetings get scheduled, and strategies are drafted, but nothing actually gets finished. Deadlines slip, and the team earns a reputation for talking big but delivering small. If Your Team Is Missing A Stabilizer: The team may have vision and energy, but priorities change weekly and no one knows exactly what's due when. Work gets duplicated, resources are wasted, and important initiatives lose momentum. If Your Team Is Missing A Harmonizer: On paper, the team looks great. In reality, interpersonal tensions simmer until they boil over. Without someone smoothing relationships and de-escalating conflicts, friction eats into performance and causes valuable people to leave. If Your Team Is Missing A Trailblazer: The team executes flawlessly, on yesterday's plan. Without a role dedicated to fresh thinking, the group defaults to 'safe' ideas, misses market shifts, and becomes vulnerable to more innovative competitors. Why This Matters Even More When You Go Lean In large teams, missing a role is sometimes masked; there's enough slack in the system for other people to cover, even if they do it imperfectly. But in lean teams, there's no safety net. If you downsize and eliminate the only person acting as your Stabilizer, deadlines start slipping immediately. Lose your only Harmonizer, and a small disagreement can turn into a productivity-killing feud. Lean teams don't have the luxury of redundancy. Every gap is amplified. That's why the first move for a CEO aiming to make their team smaller and stronger should be a role audit, not a headcount spreadsheet. How to Audit for Role Balance Before You Cut The Payoff: Smaller Teams, Bigger Output A lean, role-balanced team delivers more with less because: When these roles are present, small teams become sharper, faster, and more adaptable than bloated ones—without burning people out. If you're a CEO and you want to make your team leaner and more effective, stop thinking about who to cut based on salary or title. Start thinking about which roles you can't afford to lose. Once you protect those roles, you can streamline headcount with confidence. And you'll end up with a smaller team that's not just surviving, but outperforming.
Zawya
07-08-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Energy, tech, and finance sectors feel comms pressure in Africa
Strategic communications is under pressure. Regulation is accelerating. Investors are scrutinising more closely. And public backlash now lands in hours, not days. Across industries, communications is no longer just about visibility – it's about viability. For leaders in Africa's most dynamic sectors, comms has become a frontline function for managing regulatory complexity, investor expectations, and social trust. It's no longer optional. It's operational. In Africa, where younger regulatory systems can be fragmented and enforcement uneven, this shift is sharper. A missed message doesn't just weaken reputation but risks investor confidence, compliance, and public trust – making strategic comms no longer optional. It's operational. In PRCA Africa and APRA's 2024 report on the state of PR and ethics in Africa, risk preparedness comes out as a leading communications challenge across the continent. It's an insight echoed in APO Group's own client data. In the first half of 2025, demand for reputational crisis support rose significantly. A dipstick poll of our 57,000+ LinkedIn network also flagged energy and sustainability, and tech and digital as sectors in need of attention in Africa. The takeaway: visibility alone is no longer enough. Here are three sectors where the pressure is most acute. 1. Energy and sustainability: ESG expectations without the guardrails With COP30 approaching and ESG frameworks being reassessed globally, African energy players are under the pump. The EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) has been delayed, while the US SEC has scaled back ESG disclosure rules. Meanwhile, the UN's 2025 SDG Progress Report shows that only 15% of goals are on track. In this vacuum, the narrative is up for grabs. From Nigeria's diversification strategy to South Africa's unbundling reforms and Namibia's green push, communicators must now translate ambiguity into trust-building messaging. And sustainability communications must stand up to activist, investor, and local scrutiny without the cushion of global consensus. 2. Tech and digital: AI moves faster than the messaging In Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana, AI adoption is racing ahead of legislation. This puts PR teams on the front line: managing deepfake risk, public confusion over AI applications, and the reputational implications of algorithmic bias – all before regulatory frameworks are finalised. Without this certainty, legal and compliance voices are prone to shaping communications more conservatively. The next frontier is electoral interference: with several African nations holding elections in 2025, concerns are mounting that AI-generated misinformation, including deepfakes, could be used to manipulate public sentiment or discredit political figures. Already, the African Union and Kenya's National Cohesion and Integration Commission have raised early warnings about AI-driven disinformation campaigns seeded through social media networks. For PR teams, this means that election-year communications strategies must now include real-time fact-checking, media training to counter visual manipulation, and crisis protocols for false attribution. Meanwhile, Kenya's Data Protection Act and other regional privacy laws are reshaping how companies communicate consent and transparency. Cybersecurity threats are now regular boardroom topics, and PR teams must respond with proactive, trust-driven messaging strategies. 3. Financial services: Rebuilding trust in a high-friction regulatory era As Africa's fintech sector matures, communications leaders are navigating not just launch PR, but investor confidence issues and consumer trust erosion. The Central Bank of Nigeria's mobile money rules and the East African Community's cross-border payments integration are prompting firms to localise trust messaging in real time. In Ghana, the Bank of Ghana suspended the operations of several digital lenders in 2024 over breaches of consumer protection rules. This came after a spike in complaints about predatory loan terms and data privacy violations. The fallout damaged public trust and exposed a gap in crisis preparedness: many brands lacked clear communication during enforcement and struggled to rebuild credibility. In 2025, those that recovered best were the ones who treated communications as a regulatory ally, not an afterthought. What next: Strategy, not sentiment From image-building to operational discipline, comms leaders across sectors must recalibrate. High-performing teams embed communications into policy forecasts, regulatory roadmaps, and investor dialogues – not just campaigns. And responses must be turned around in hours, not days. Done well, communications can be an organisation's operating system for trust, alignment, and action – and in 2025, the difference between proactive and reactive comms is reputational survival. APO Group's work across 54 African markets shows: comms delayed is opportunity lost. The question is no longer whether to elevate comms, but whether you've waited too long. All rights reserved. © 2022. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (
