Span Of Control
CA Narinder Jit Singh (Silver Medalist - IIM Kashipur)
Internal Auditor & Risk Management Professional with more than 2 decades of experience
Few days back, I had a discussion with one of the sector head (internal audit) of a big group. While in discussion, topic diverted towards span of control. He wanted to know how many people a single person can supervise without any other adequate information relating to the subject. When, I tried putting an argument stating it’s not that simple, one needs to considered number of factors before deciding about appropriate span of control, nothing prevailed. With effort, I could extract only one information about the experience of the team ranged from 3 to 9 years. After much beating about the bush, I stuck with the statement that all seven people can directly report to single person, as various research studies show 7 as appropriate span of control. One can google for factors, which play role while deciding about span of control. I rarely find this aspect being paid attention in organisations when creating structure. It’s more on hunch rather than documented facts for organizational structure. In few cases, it could be sheer lack of knowledge on part of the person creating structure. You get the structure, never the back-working papers based on which this decision has been arrived at. In our field of work (Internal Audit), having maximum financial technical knowledge, its altogether neglected area. However, wrong structure could be reason for many pain points in the organisations. In my opinion, when deciding about organizational structure / structure of the department, interplay of various factors, be it criticality role and responsibilities, complexities of the job, technical expertise of the persons supervised, abilities of supervisor (both behavioral and technical), dynamism of environmental factors affecting organization etc needs to be considered. We can include review of organizational structure as part of internal audit plan. However, I doubt how much ability internal auditors are having in this field and acceptability it would have with management. Success or failure of departments/ organizations depend upon to great extent on appropriate structure, span of control being one part of it.
(The views expressed constitute the ideas & opinions of the author and the author alone; they can’t in any case represent the views and opinions of the author’s employers, supervisors, nor do they represent the view of organizations, businesses or institutions the author is, or has been a part thereof.)
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6 年I would be cautious beyond 5. If you really want to do justice to a team, you need to be aware about your capability as well as team capabilities. Teams doing repetitive tasks, tasks which does not require creative inputs, can have larger numbers of people in teams. Similarly, when team members are highly disciplined, where you need to guide them occasionally, you can have larger numbers of direct reports. A tendency to accumulate power have direct relationship with number of people. People largely overestimate their capability to manage larger team.