Span of Control

The span of control is one of the major questions for the organizational design. The organization with the large span of control for one manager can save a lot of costs on its management, but it has to put a far larger responsibility on its members and employees.

The decision about the span of control is very essential for the organization and it is about the trust of the leaders of the founders to the management of the organization.

Many times, the founders make a wrong decision about the span of control in the organization. They want to have a very narrow organizational structure, but they do not want to delegate the responsibilities to the lower management and empower the individual employees of the organization.

The span of control is directly linked with the responsibilities and delegation in the organization. When the span of control is wide and the decision are taken at the top levels of the organization, the top level is very slow and overcrowded with many requests for the decision.

The founders do the decision about the span of control in the organization usually with their intuitive trust to the next level of the management. It is very hard to change the general span of control in the organization as the founders usually like the setting as it is.

Many organizations starve or die due the bad decision about the span of control. The span of control is not universal, each organization needs its own setup, but the founders and top management have to agree on the best choice for the organization and they have to be ready to make changes in the future.