Business Management Trend: Span of Control

Anyone who is remotely interested in the field of business is likely well aware of the fact that management trends and new ideas about leadership and organization seem to be everywhere. If it's not a new book promising better sales and better organization, it's an infomercial on television that promises to be able to teach the secrets of getting rich. However, as has been proven time and time again, some of the most effective things that we can learn to make ourselves better businessmen and better leaders are also some of the oldest and most well documented ideas.

Although modern business and organization has strangely turned away from many of these classic ideals, when we actually take the time to stop and think about it, we find that many of these ideas are absolutely essential to running a better business, and can help with nearly all aspects. With regards to leadership, perhaps one of the most important ideas to consider is what is known as "span of control".

Span of control is closely related to other classical ideals of business, such as division of labor and hierarchical organization. Essentially, the idea of span of control deals with how many people one person can effectively supervise. In a business sense, we must ask ourselves the questions of how many people can one person effectively manage? Although we may think that it is best to allow one person to control as many people as possible, the traditional theory dictates that this is simply not the case.

According to the theory of span of control, the larger and wider the spans are, the more effective the organization will be as a whole. What this means is that it is best to structure the organization as a pyramid, and a limited span should be given out at each level. For example, if we have an organization with roughly four thousand employees, there would be multiples of four at each span level. So, one person would exist at the top, followed by four people under him. Those four under the CEO would each have 16 people that report to them. Those sixteen people would have 64 under them, and 64 individuals would be reported to by 256 employees.