Speed up the Execution of the Business Strategy
Organizational Challenges
The organization had engaged in a delayer project facilitated by a strategy consultancy company. The aim was to improve the execution power by removing two layers of leadership and increase the average number of direct reports to seven. This initiative required a reorganization of the organizational structure and rethinking the business flow.
One of the core solutions brought to the table by the strategy consultants was to increase the span of control.
How We Make a Difference
Span of control matters. But this can hardly be a surprise to any leader in an organization. So why, in the first place, do we end up in a situation where too many leaders have too few direct reports?
Whereas there can be many reasons for this, we have learned over time that many leaders tend to avoid having more than four or five direct reports because every extra direct report requires that they spend more time on leadership which limits the time they can spend on “doing work themselves”.
This attitude is anchored in the lack of transition into their leadership role. They still find more comfort and satisfaction in doing work themselves and solving day-to-day problems rather than doing leadership work.
Our role in projects like this is to design and deliver core leadership transition programs that can help the leaders “step up” to their leadership responsibilities. This is not fixed by traditional leadership programs. This requires programs that focus on supporting the leaders in fundamentally adjusting their work values – meaning how they truly experience that they add value and what they like doing.
Of course, in a transformation project you can just redesign the organization by force and secure the desired number of layers and span of control. However, if you do not deal with the leadership challenges at the same time, three or four years later you will be back to where you started as your leaders will easily find ways to decrease their span of control over time, if they fundamentally do not want a larger span of control.