Situation 07 · Leadership structure
Spans of control between three and thirty.
Layers that only pass things through. Managers with no steering function. The leadership architecture has grown, not been designed — and every intervention hits people with names.
The management layers are to be reviewed and probably reduced. In the board paper this is called management spans or Span of Control.
The problem underneath is that a span is a metric and not a design. Three and thirty can both be justified — the question is what task the layer has and whether it has one.
The spans are part of it. They follow from the task, and from how close that task sits to the decision — not the other way round — and every intervention hits people with names, which makes the reasoning matter more than the number.
Which span carries which function, which layer goes — and in what order, without losing the ability to steer?
Spans that fit each function instead of one blanket figure. And a reduction in layers that does not sacrifice the ability to steer during the rebuild.