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Spans of Control

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A couple thoughts about team size, or span of control:

I started a career-resembling job almost four years ago. Since then, I’ve worked on six different teams (For the record, I’ve only changed jobs once – my first job was in the midst of a unit reorganization, which was itself in the midst of a larger reorganization). One team was a manager and six employees; the five others, a manager and only one or two employees.

Peter Drucker said the ideal was a 1:7 manager to employee ratio, but it all depends on what kind of work we’re talking about. Knowledge work tends to involve smaller spans of control than more traditional work.

Knowledge work organizations are increasingly outsourcing remaining in-the-weeds tasks, leaving a higher proportion of managerial and executive roles. In the case of my organization, writ large, the number of executive positions has almost doubled in a smidge over two decades (this could also be, to some extent, a trend of centralization).

All of which leaves knowledge workers, on average, with smaller teams. Of course, there are advantages and disadvantages. On the bright side, it allows familiar partnerships to develop between team members, and (should) allow time for managers to work with and coach individual employees.

However, there are also disadvantages.

One is that if the workload changes for a manager with two employees, the minimum change in staff capacity is, at first, 33%: Going from three staff to either two or four. For contrast, a manager with nine employees has the 10% and 20% options available. Absent appropriate provisions for flexibility and collaboration across silos, the buffer staff capacity scattered throughout an organization could represent significant lost productivity. Conversely, temporary heavy workloads can stress employees.

Another is that this team size deprives managers of opportunity to genuinely manage. A central function of managers is the division of goals into manageable tasks, and the alignment of those tasks with those who have the time and capacity to well fulfill them. A manager with only one employee has only the binary 1 or 0 option when considering a task: Yes, delegate, or No, don’t.

(Yes, the manager could collaborate with said employee, but that still divides goals into concrete elements. The elements may just be traded back and forth throughout the fulfillment of the overarching goal.)

However, the real danger in the above is when managers start promoting into executive positions, and those spans of control start expanding significantly. That deprivation of the opportunity to manage could reveal itself as a deprivation of learning opportunities, development, and growth.

To be perfectly honest, I have no real concluding thought here. Perhaps it is that large-span managerial experience would be exceptionally useful in building a career towards senior executiveness. Perhaps it is that managers, and their managers, need to be particularly mindful of development in small-span managerial roles. Perhaps it isn’t a big deal, although there is correlation between organizational performance and industry-benchmarked average span of control (aim for the industry average).

For me, it’s just another element of a common theme: There is a vast difference between managing people and having people report to you, and that difference deserves greater appreciation.



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