I was recently involved (as a participant) in a strategic planning event; the facilitator, Alan Pue, was discussing many of the ways that planning — and its subsequent implementation — can go wrong.
In part of that commentary, he mentioned as an example a firm’s inability to adapt to a necessary change in the market, and how that inability adversely affected their performance. Alan wasn’t sympathetic to their plight, nor even empathetic. In fact, he made it clear that the problem was their own doing, and the resultant pain was of their own creation. They did it to themselves, have no one else to blame, and these lessons — though valuable — can be painful.
I agree.
When we act so dumb in business that we can’t get out of our own way, the resultant pain is our own doing. Sort of like touching a hot stove, we hopefully learn that we shouldn’t do that again.
What’s the optimum number of direct reports? How many people should a single manager have working for them? What we are referring to, of course, is “Span of Control,” and though there can be unique situations in some organizations, there are also decent historical guidelines.
Span of control isn’t simply dependent on individuals; it’s a basic limitation of all managers as it describes only their direct reports. Though any manager can control any number of people if there are enough levels in between, not so when it comes to direct reports.
Research (mostly military-based) has shown that a leader can directly control about three to six persons effectively. Additionally, the “relationships” among those supervised are as important as their actual number.
Managing four people who interact constantly might be harder than supervising five or six who work largely independently.
Generally, an executive (someone managing managers) should supervise a maximum of four or five people.
In real practice, you don’t have to be an expert to know if you’re in trouble with span of control. If you have more than half a dozen people reporting to you, it’s probably too many.
Even six could be too many if those six have consistent dealings with each other. The reason of course, is that in addition to managing relationships with each subordinate, managers have to get involved to an extent in their relationships with each other.
In simple terms, going from four to five direct reports, each with four direct reports of their own, potentially doubles your effective workload while increasing your output (productivity) capacity by only 20 percent.
If the people you supervise don’t interact, you can handle more of them.
Remember, too, that I’m discussing managerial span of control — managers managing managers. The numbers can increase significantly when managing individual contributors, particularly if highly skilled.
I didn’t disappear, just fell victim to the “wait until the end of the year to do that” disease.
I did, and it hurt. Traveled 6 out of the last 8 weeks out of the year… and remember, I’m one of those that doesn’t even like to travel. Simply brutal.
Further, with the growth of my business, I’ve been in something of a “hiring” mode, and that’s equally difficult to do — personally — while traveling.
Speaking of hiring… now that the new year is upon us, it’s a great time to do some cleaning up. And I mean the really difficult stuff. Have that performance conversation with the under-performing employee; hire that new sales or marketing pro; stop doing those things that don’t create enterprise value, and focus on those things that do.
I’ll be back soon with something to write home to mom about — thanks for tuning in.
Today marks day 81 of a 3-week home renovation project.
I hate everyone. Especially contractors.
Not hate really, though at a minimum, I am significantly miffed. We’ve been without normalcy at home for going on three months. As someone who works from that home, it’s no small diversion.
Fired first contractor, then lamented because the second one – though faster and more experienced – lacked many of the attributes held by the fired first contractor. Tidbits like honesty, reliability, and integrity, you know, small stuff. /s/
Partly my fault (described below), partly undependable contractors (again, below), but blame isn’t high on my list right now.
Now, it’s just get the damned thing done.
In all fairness, the initial time estimate was aggressive, and I knew it. It went downhill from there. But there are some solid leadership lessons to be learned from the depths of my pit of despair:
Expectations need to be clear, well communicated, and reasonable. I was solid on the first two, weak on the last one.
When someone overpromises, and you know it, have those iterative discussions where we work out a more realistic deliverable timeframe. Most people don’t want to under-deliver, but we allow many to over-promise.
We in leadership can become complicit in their over-promise/under-deliver death spiral.
Know that people will at times disappoint you. We’re all human (well, most of us – you know who I’m talking about), we all make mistakes, and showing some grace allows us, as leaders, to actually demonstrate some of that fancy empathy we’re always reading about.
Miscalculating a deliverable shouldn’t be grounds for a firing squad; it should, however, be a time for discussions, dialog, even negotiations. Now would be the time to get real, and our discussions must allow someone to feel comfortable “coming clean.”
Repeating from above, most people really don’t want to under-deliver; they simply wanted to show competence, gain our confidence, and demonstrate they can do what they promised. Unfortunately, when they “miss,” it can sometimes display just the opposite of those characteristics.
Don’t fall for “the next guy/gal will be better” trap. The first guy under-delivered. His work quality was great, he was reasonably dependable (he’s still a contractor, after all), but I never doubted that he had our best interests at heart.
He only became noncommunicative when it became clear he was going to miss his deadline, by a huge measure. That should have been a clear indicator for me to dive in, but I didn’t.
I had become complicit in his death spiral.
The second contractor was faster, clearly more experienced (and knowledgeable), but we always felt we had to ask him he right questions to get an obvious answer. It didn’t feel like he was our advocate.
We had taken for granted the first contractor’s positive traits, and exacerbated his weaknesses.
Don’t do that.
Having Courageous Conversations. And sooner rather than later.
The first contractor got in over his head; Traci and I discussed it, we made a light, non-specific comment or two to him, and then continued to stew about his slow delivery. It didn’t end well.
The lesson there is three-fold:
Know when you need to have those difficult discussions,
Have them at the onset of difficulties, not when you start getting perturbed, and
Allow the person the opportunity to correct based on the conversation.
Those difficult and courageous conversations are, well, difficult. It does take a measure of courage to dive in and get them done. But we need to do just that. And do it when we first notice something off-track.
Ironically, difficult discussions seem easier when we get angry, but that’s precisely the time we should not be having them.
Fast-forward to today.
I’m writing this as I prepare to go to my daughter’s house to have a few
zoom meetings today and tomorrow. We rehired the first contractor (clean slate) who is now doing an incredible job and are keeping the second contractor on a short leash to make sure he does as promised with no corners cut.
Between the two of them, and us, we should be done in time for our beach trip that starts Monday.
Hopefully, that’s not just wishful thinking on my part. If it is, you’ll read part two next month…
A couple of decades ago, my daughter accompanied me to my cubicle in the Pentagon as part of Take Your Child to Work Day. Pretty boring for an 11-year-old who observed that my entire morning consisted of “playing” on the computer, talking to my friends around the office and on the phone, and wandering around the 17 miles of corridors visiting with people in other cubicles about nonsensical things.
At lunchtime, we were crossing the 5-acre center courtyard looking for child-friendly food when she looked up at me and asked, “Dad, when are you going to get a real job?”
“A real job like what, Honey?”
Pointing to the hard-hatted workers repairing the roof, she knowingly replied, “like those guys up there.”
I’m sure she wasn’t the only one in my office that day without a clue how I really spent my time.
Ever wonder what some people in our organizations really do to earn their paychecks? I mean, besides transporting their coffee cup from one office to another, what do they actually do?
Of course we have.
On the flip side, do people in our organizations wonder what we get paid to do? Heaven forbid!
Because we’re leaders, most of us think we know exactly what each
member or our team does, but we’re a little fuzzy when it comes to what our boss does. Which is odd, since we’re sure our boss doesn’t know what all we do to lead our teams, just like we’re sure our team members don’t appreciate all the effort we put in behind the scenes for their benefit. They probably think we spend our days chatting on the phone, playing on the computer, and visiting with people in other parts of the building.
In other words, it’s a phenomenon we talk about as if we’re not a part of the equation. Why is that? Why do we think we’re the only leader in the company who’s in the know?
And does it even matter?
It matters only if we care what kind of culture our organization has. If there is a lack of awareness about what others in the company are doing, it means we probably work for a company that isn’t transparent and isn’t preparing the next generation of leaders. It means we aren’t making sure our team members know where they fit into the overall strategy, and we might not even be sure where we fit in. It means we’re not empowering our people to do more than the minimum required to keep their jobs.
I’ve gotten pushback from almost everyone I bring this up to. The typical response: “I know exactly what my team does! And I know what my boss’s job is.”
And I throw the BS flag every time.
We may know what we expect of our teams and whether or not they deliver, but it’s not the same as appreciating the effort it takes them or knowing if we’re utilizing their true capabilities and capacity… even if we’ve had their job before. Same reason we don’t think our boss knows what we really do. It doesn’t have to be that way.
We’re better leaders when we know what our teams are struggling with to be successful – and whether we’re challenging them to be even more successful. And we gain that understanding by (wait for it…) talking with them and not just to them.
We’re better leaders when we make sure people know how their performance and successes contribute to the company’s overall success. That’s part of making them feel valued for their efforts.
We’re better leaders when we empower our teams to take on greater responsibilities that prepare them for future challenges. Along the way, we usually find they can accomplish some of what we do, enabling us to focus some of our efforts elsewhere – like maybe how we can enable our boss to focus their efforts on others.
And we’re better leaders when we do these things without causing our teams to feel micromanaged or being seen as managing up. Remember, our success depends on the team’s success… and so does our boss’s.
Does any of this ring a bell? Can we be more selflessly engaged in people’s roles up and down the organizational structure?
