Span of Control Related Topics 
RapidStart Leadership
AUGUST 14, 2018
Building Teams and Culture Problem Solving and Decision Making delegation leadership management positive reinforcement problem solving recognition span of control team culture team leadership time management“Can Team Leadership really be boiled down into four steps?” ” Leaders are always busy, and whatever we are involved with, things only seem to grow more complicated over time.
Lead Change Blog
MARCH 6, 2020
Let’s be honest, 40% of the average person’s time is spent working. Of course, it’s difficult to remember everything, especially if your span of control is 25 or more—let alone if you also want to remember things about all the coworkers your direct colleagues guide in the everyday operation of your organization. I once heard about a director who learned by heart the names and faces of all 250 coworkers before he started working for a new organization.
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Lead Change Blog
SEPTEMBER 25, 2019
How to do this involves four key steps: We need to expand our definition of leadership. They are not the privileged few at the apex of any organisation. Increasingly, leaders exist in a much longer ‘span of control’ network. They need to get things done without too much ‘command and control’. They need to trust other staff, leaders themselves, to do what is necessary without high levels of oversight and supervision.
Lead Change Blog
AUGUST 15, 2019
In recent months, I have coached a couple of individuals as they each transitioned to a new role in a different organization. While they are exceptionally good at what they do and have been picked up by the organizations because of their subject matter expertise, the individuals needed help in coping with their anxiety about the new job. In the transition phase, the feeling of anxiety and uncertainty is normal. One has to learn new rules of engagement.
N2Growth Blog
OCTOBER 25, 2016
Clearly, it’s time for a new strategic planning paradigm to emerge – one that features the right set of “ next practices ” that your organization can embrace to dramatically increase its success. Disregard the pro forma and seek rapid results, instead – many planning methods are overly dependent on the parochial interests of its senior leaders (i.e., Be sure that your planning process has those kinds of tools built-in.
Leading Blog
OCTOBER 20, 2014
In my research studying the situations and types of leaders that bring out the best in people, I’ve noticed a counterintuitive but persistent theme: people tend to do their best work when they are out of their comfort zone, doing something important and difficult – often for the very first time. When they see a struggling team member, they intervene without usurping control and then put the rookie back on the tightrope. Many of us go kicking and screaming.
N2Growth Blog
MARCH 27, 2011
What if there were no costs, no strings attached, no hidden agendas, no complex curriculum, but just a simple set of instructions for you to follow over the next 5 days that will change your world as a leader? If I do away with all the management speak and complex theory, leadership can actually be distilled down to one very tangible measurement; the quality of your relationships. The bad news is unhealthy relationships are in fact a reflection of your leadership ability.
N2Growth Blog
MARCH 26, 2012
If you’re in a position of leadership and don’t feel you have any blind spots, you’re either very naïve or very arrogant. The reality is most leaders invest so much time assessing the cultural and functional dynamics of their organizations they often forget the importance of critically assessing themselves – big mistake. The best leaders apply their craft contextually based upon the needs of those whom they serve. Control is about power – not leadership.
N2Growth Blog
OCTOBER 1, 2012
There’s no shortage of independent empirical data generated over the years supporting the fact most people tend to overrate their leadership ability. I’ve always said leaders need to get over themselves and get on to the practice of leadership. People arrive at a position of leadership in many different ways – some individuals openly and aggressively seek out positions of leadership, while leadership is thrust upon others. Control is about power – not leadership.
Marshall Goldsmith
JUNE 28, 2017
Based on our database of over 4 million leaders, the highest ranked behavior of our top performers is a commitment to self-improvement. Express the cause and effect of their contributions/role in the organization and the appreciation that you personally feel. Don’t commit beyond your span of control. See The Marshall Goldsmith Thinkers50 Video Blog for more of this video series.
Great Leadership By Dan
APRIL 16, 2012
However, there are jobs that are so far down the deep end of the empowerment continuum that it feels like you’re on your own with little or no supervision. In many organizations and occupations, “management by walking around” and micromanagement have fell by the wayside, either by design or out of necessity. Organizations are flatter, spans of control have increased, and hundreds of thousands of employees now work from home.
CEO Blog
NOVEMBER 29, 2015
We have 8 teams which is a good number for span of control. 1 - Director of Mentors - This person organizes the mentors(and in many cases it is a mentor family - not just one person) and assigns families. Each refugee family is assigned to a lead mentor who orchestrates the group of mentors for them. The mentors have a checklist of things that must be done for each family. 2 - Director of Finance - monitors all the money including the in-kind donations.
Skip Prichard
JULY 19, 2021
Captain Mark Brouker, retired US Navy , is a wealth of practical leadership wisdom gained from his military career as well as his experience as a professor, executive coach, and speaker. In other words – and here’s the good news – there are hundreds of opportunities each day to impact trust.
Harvard Business Review
SEPTEMBER 25, 2012
Although it may be counter-intuitive, one of the most powerful changes you can make in your organization is to increase spans of control — a simple shift that can liberate employees, streamline the hierarchy, simplify processes, and reduce costs. Let me explain: Span of control ("spans" for short) conventionally indicates how many people report to a single manager.
Harvard Business Review
APRIL 1, 2014
A healthcare industry sales executive recently told us that as part of a continued effort to cut costs, her company had reduced the number of first-line sales managers from 66 down to 30 over a period of several years. This meant that management span of control had more than doubled from an average of 5-6 salespeople per manager up to 12-15 per manager. The average span of control for U.S.
Rajesh Setty
FEBRUARY 25, 2011
I have had the pleasure of meeting Jack Hayhow last year and I have known him for years now. He is one not only very sharp but also one of the kindest people I have met. I still remember a quick phone call I had with Jack where I was validating one of my new initiatives. Jack was all smiling (I think because I couldn’t see him on the phone) and with utmost care (and without mincing words) explained why that initiative had very little chance of succeeding.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 2, 2014
One common culprit is out-of-control tooth-to-tail ratios. Not long ago my colleagues and I studied the cost of adding a manager or executive, and we found a kind of multiplier effect (see the graphic below). These high-priced folks typically require support from a caravan of assistants and/or chiefs of staff. Take into account, however, that different jobs require different spans of control.
Harvard Business Review
OCTOBER 23, 2012
What you do first and the sequence of actions that follow can make or break your effort. Here are two examples of this problem: Headcount reduction or simplification? Following a merger, the CEO of a large manufacturing company was concerned that the newly combined business had too many complex and unnecessary processes, all of which made it difficult to get things done and drove up costs. Timing is critical for successful organizational change.
Harvard Business Review
AUGUST 19, 2013
Denis was a bright, handsome, 45-year-old French executive who had failed his way up the ladder—almost to the top of his family''s fourth generation perfume business. As the eldest son of the family patriarch, Denis went directly from university into the family business. During his entire career, he worked in his father''s span of control, reporting directly to his dad within six years of joining the business.
Harvard Business Review
DECEMBER 23, 2016
Talent can move into and out of an organization, through a growing array of options such as freelance platforms , crowdsourcing efforts, and temporary, contract, or part-time work. The ManpowerGroup Contingent Workforce Index of 2013 showed 40% of all ManpowerGroup consulting engagements blended permanent and contingent workers. ManpowerGroup found that 80% of companies lack a reliable picture of their total workforce. Marion Barraud for HBR.
Harvard Business Review
NOVEMBER 4, 2016
As someone who has been in the business of hiring people and developing people organizations for many years, I’ve noticed two common first-day-on-the-job scenarios. The rest of her first 90 days are structured for success and well documented. By now we know that career development is a primary driver of employee happiness and that promoting employee mobility leads to better cross-functional communication and retention of top performers.
Harvard Business Review
SEPTEMBER 23, 2015
The study, led by Seth Prins, a doctoral student at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, was recently published online in Sociology of Health & Illness. The researchers examined more than 20,000 full-time workers across a variety of roles. For their sample, they utilized 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESRAC), and narrowed that down to a set of 21,859 full-time employees.
Harvard Business Review
MARCH 23, 2017
Bigger than the average Wal-Mart , it has a canopy of more than 19,000 square meters. It is designated as the National Tree of India. Similar to the branches and roots of the banyan, they flourish by surrounding themselves with like-spirited colleagues, bonding around the core. They successfully expand their span of control outward from the center, gathering more influence over time.
Harvard Business Review
SEPTEMBER 5, 2016
By our reckoning, the cost of excess bureaucracy in the U.S. economy amounts to more than $3 trillion in lost economic output, or about 17% of GDP. According to our analysis of occupational data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 23.8 of the U.S. workforce and received nearly 30% of total compensation. How many of these 23.8 The case of Svenska Handelsbanken is illustrative. million managers and the equivalent of 8.9
Harvard Business Review
SEPTEMBER 24, 2012
When I was at the Dial Corporation (makers of Dial soap) in the 1980s, executives working at corporate headquarters went through a now-antiquated ritual every day at 11:45. Meetings and phone calls would end and most of the directors, senior directors, various breeds of vice presidents, division presidents, and occasionally our CEO would make their way to the top floor executive dining room for lunch.
Harvard Business Review
JANUARY 10, 2018
But rather than living with imposter’s syndrome , or feeling exhausted by wearing your game face all day, you can build a truer confidence by more intentionally focusing on cultivating many different parts of your leadership voice each day. Ultimately, you should cultivate enough parts of your voice so that no matter the leadership situation or audience you find yourself facing, you can respond in an authentic, constructive, and effective way. Your voice of character.
Harvard Business Review
FEBRUARY 15, 2011
Large organizations in particular have always struggled with the challenges of communications. In fact, the concept of span of control — a decades-old organizational design principle — was derived originally from communications research analyzing supervisors' interactions with various numerical sets of subordinates. Lack of questions and dialogue: Recently I sat in on an "all-hands" meeting for a department of a major bank.
Harvard Business Review
DECEMBER 14, 2012
You might know all of that, but are you fully embracing it? The next question, the underlying one, is always the same: how is this going to affect the amount of power I have? Traditionally, being powerful within an organization has been a function of three aspects of bossness: (a) your title and rank within the hierarchy, (b) your span of control, or how many people you direct, and (c) your budget and/or profit and loss responsibilities.
Harvard Business Review
MAY 28, 2013
Over the past several years we have heard hundreds of managers talk about the negative impact of complexity on both productivity and workplace morale. This message has been reinforced by the findings of major CEO surveys conducted by IBM and KPMG [PDF], both of which identified complexity as a key business challenge. Over time however, it''s important to do all seven so that simplicity becomes a core capability of your organization and not just a one-time project.
Harvard Business Review
SEPTEMBER 8, 2017
That leaves Chief Marketing Officers with a decision — do you see the rise of these roles as an opportunity or a threat? The reason for these new roles is that we’re entering a new era of digital transformation. These efforts have enabled operational efficiencies, cost reductions, and greater agility, preparing companies for the next phase of digital transformation: driving growth. CMOs can find themselves on a downward path for a variety of reasons.
Harvard Business Review
JULY 19, 2017
Companies like ANZ, the Australian-based banking giant, have made explicit commitments to adopt agile principles , while others like Zappos, are on the bleeding edge of organizational transformation. Sorting through every function and every part of your company’s operating model to determine which parts of the agile playbook to adopt requires some deep thinking. The group started by meeting every Monday for an hour or two, but found the pace of decision making too slow.
Harvard Business Review
FEBRUARY 26, 2016
Any advantages you have now will pale in comparison with a great set of algorithms that differentiates the customer experience. Sensors, the cloud, mobile and broadband wireless, and other such technologies are increasing the flow of digitized information exponentially. In the hands of a “catalyst,” such as the late Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergio Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, or Mark Andreessen, algorithms can radically alter the consumer experience.
Harvard Business Review
FEBRUARY 9, 2017
It has to put the strategy into practice with measurable objectives, consistent measurement of progress toward those goals, feedback systems to monitor activities along the way, and appropriate consequences for reaching or failing to reach the goals. They understand the objectives, and they have a great deal of freedom in determining how to reach them within those guardrails. Balancing alignment with control. Spotify fosters alignment without excessive control.
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