ORGANISATIONAL HEALTH
Span of Control: Myths, Realities, and Limitations as a Management Indicator
02.06.2025
What Is Span of Control and Why Does It Matter?
Span of control refers to the number of employees directly reporting to a manager. The recent LinkedIn post claiming that “span of control can enable agility or add complexity” sparked this article, but the debate over this metric is far from new. Span of control (SoC)—or “span of management,” as it is alternately termed—has a century-long history rooted in the industrial era’s command-and-control ethos. The very fluctuation in its name (“control” vs. “management”) hints at its origins in a time when a major manager’s function was control over their subordinates.
As early as 1977, Van Fleet and Bedeian, in their work "A History of the Span of Management", highlighted that the quest for the “ideal number of subordinates” is a problem rooted in classical management theories of the early twentieth century. Yet, this topic remains relevant decades later and requires rethinking in the context of cognitive limitations and the dynamics of modern organisations.
Firstly, it is important to note that adding complexity is not always a bad thing—sometimes, complexity is necessary to manage the variety and richness of the organisational context. Secondly, in practice, it is often the unnecessary increase in organisational layers, rather than simply widening the span of control, that leads to excessive complexity and bureaucracy.
Why Is Everyone Looking for a “Magic Formula”?
The internet and HR literature are full of simple formulas for calculating span of control: divide the number of employees by the number of managers, and there is your number. Some sources even claim the “ideal” span of control is 5–7 direct reports, referencing George Miller’s famous “7 ± 2” rule about the capacity of short-term memory. This analogy seems convenient: if a person can hold 5–9 items in memory, a manager should be able to effectively control the same number of people.
This obsession with numerical simplicity reflects what Steve Hearsum identifies as a "deep-seated psychological need for “silver bullets”—easy solutions to complex problems. Hearsum notes that this urge is rooted in “our discomfort with ambiguity and our desire for certainty and control in the face of complexity” ("No Silver Bullet: Bursting the Bubble of the Organisational Quick Fix", 2024). As he argues, the desire for control and certainty in uncertain environments drives individuals and organisations to cling to oversimplified metrics like span of control, even when they lack empirical validity. This aligns with Bandiera et al.’s critique (2014) of attempts to directly apply cognitive limits like Miller’s “7 ± 2” to organisational design. In the HBS working paper "Span of Control and Span of Attention", the link between cognitive limits (such as Miller’s span of attention) and managerial span of control is not straightforward. While the “magical number seven” is a memorable psychological finding, the application of this limit to organisational design is questionable and lacks robust scientific support.
While we certainly use CognaDev’s CPP toolkit to reveal cognitive processes of managers, it would be too naïve to correlate key managerial responsibilities with the most basic cognitive function of memory.
The Consulting Perspective: From “Right Numbers” to Context
Big consultancies (MBB and Big4, for example) long ago promoted “ideal” spans, often prescribing numbers by organisational layer. Pleading guilty and having served with such consultancies before, the author also used to think that there was structured guidance around a span of control until he pushed a little bit further to reveal a more nuanced picture. Attempts to copy formulas or industry benchmarks often lead to mistakes and new problems, and now, even McKinsey explicitly states: “Chasing a universal span of control number can reduce organisational effectiveness. Optimisation requires understanding the context, tasks, and specific nature of managers’ and teams’ work.” Today, the consensus is that context, not formula, should dictate structure. This evolution reflects a broader shift in management thinking towards situational and evidence-based approaches.
The Manager’s Ability to Lead Effectively: The Key Is Cognitive Capability and Job/Task Complexity
When we say that the key is not the number of direct reports but the manager’s ability to lead the team in a specific context, we mean, first and foremost, the cognitive ability to perform work at the level of complexity required by their role. This is exactly what we successfully assess in almost all our projects.
Management effectiveness depends directly on whether the manager’s level of thinking, analysis, and decision-making matches the complexity of the tasks they are assigned with (or, size of the problems they are solving). In modern organisations, a manager is not just a “task distributor” or “controller”. Their role includes: To succeed at a specific level of complexity in a role, a certain level of cognitive development is required—for example, the ability to see cause-and-effect relationships, think systemically, forecast consequences, or adapt quickly to new conditions.
Otherwise, even a small number of direct reports can lead to overload, mistakes, and declining management quality.
So, ultimately, it is cognitive capability—not formal metrics—that determines how many people and how complex the tasks a specific manager can handle effectively. In different teams and contexts, the “ideal” span of control will differ, and only a deep analysis of managerial roles and cognitive abilities can build a truly effective structure.
What to Do Instead
We argue that the alignment of managers’ cognitive capabilities with the complexity of their roles—not arbitrary spans—is a much better indicator of organisational maturity and, when improved, contributes significantly to organisational health. While SoC might signal structural issues (e.g., overly broad spans at senior levels), it is not inherently meaningful.
In our projects, we regularly assess whether managers’ cognitive abilities match the demands of their roles. This allows us to:
- identify whether a manager can effectively handle the complexity of tasks in their roles,
- understand which development areas are most relevant for improving management effectiveness.
Conclusions
Span of control could be a useful indicator for initial structural diagnostics—nothing more. It does not provide meaningful information about organisational maturity on its own and cannot be used as a universal standard or formula. There is no scientific basis for strict numerical recommendations such as the “7 ± 2” rule. We at ORTALEX are always ready to support your organisation’s health by assessing what really has an impact – the match between managers’ cognitive capabilities and their roles’ levels of work.
Authors:
Pavel Charny, ORTALEX, Managing Partner, Dubai
References
- Bandiera, O., Prat, A., Sadun, R., & Wulf, J. (2014). "Span of Control and Span of Attention". Harvard Business School Working Paper 14-053.
- Booz & Company (now Strategy&/PwC). (2003). "Management Spans and Layers: Streamlining the Out-of-Shape Organization". Strategy& Perspective.
- Cathcart, D., Jeska, S., Karnas, J., Miller, S.E., Pechacek, J.M., & Rheault, L. (2004). "Span of control matters." Journal of Nursing Administration, 34(9), 395-399.
- Hearsum, S. (2024). "No Silver Bullet: Bursting the Bubble of the Organisational Quick Fix".
- Meier, K.J., & Bohte, J. (2000). "Span of Control and Public Organizations: Implementing Luther Gulick’s Research Design." Public Administration Review, 60(2), 158-167.
- Miller, G.A. (1956). "The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information." The Psychological Review, 63(2), 81-97.
- Nelson, E.A. (1966). "Management Theory and the Economic Size of Organizations". Santa Monica, CA: System Development Corporation.
- Van Fleet, D.D., & Bedeian, A.G. (1977). "A History of the Span of Management." Academy of Management Review, 2(3), 356-372.
- Yassine, A., et al. (2005). "Simple Models of Hierarchical Organizations." Management Science*, 51(5), 774-789.
- McKinsey & Company. (2022). "How to identify the right ‘spans of control’ for your organisation."
Span of control refers to the number of employees directly reporting to a manager. The recent LinkedIn post claiming that “span of control can enable agility or add complexity” sparked this article, but the debate over this metric is far from new. Span of control (SoC)—or “span of management,” as it is alternately termed—has a century-long history rooted in the industrial era’s command-and-control ethos. The very fluctuation in its name (“control” vs. “management”) hints at its origins in a time when a major manager’s function was control over their subordinates.
As early as 1977, Van Fleet and Bedeian, in their work "A History of the Span of Management", highlighted that the quest for the “ideal number of subordinates” is a problem rooted in classical management theories of the early twentieth century. Yet, this topic remains relevant decades later and requires rethinking in the context of cognitive limitations and the dynamics of modern organisations.
Firstly, it is important to note that adding complexity is not always a bad thing—sometimes, complexity is necessary to manage the variety and richness of the organisational context. Secondly, in practice, it is often the unnecessary increase in organisational layers, rather than simply widening the span of control, that leads to excessive complexity and bureaucracy.
Why Is Everyone Looking for a “Magic Formula”?
The internet and HR literature are full of simple formulas for calculating span of control: divide the number of employees by the number of managers, and there is your number. Some sources even claim the “ideal” span of control is 5–7 direct reports, referencing George Miller’s famous “7 ± 2” rule about the capacity of short-term memory. This analogy seems convenient: if a person can hold 5–9 items in memory, a manager should be able to effectively control the same number of people.
This obsession with numerical simplicity reflects what Steve Hearsum identifies as a "deep-seated psychological need for “silver bullets”—easy solutions to complex problems. Hearsum notes that this urge is rooted in “our discomfort with ambiguity and our desire for certainty and control in the face of complexity” ("No Silver Bullet: Bursting the Bubble of the Organisational Quick Fix", 2024). As he argues, the desire for control and certainty in uncertain environments drives individuals and organisations to cling to oversimplified metrics like span of control, even when they lack empirical validity. This aligns with Bandiera et al.’s critique (2014) of attempts to directly apply cognitive limits like Miller’s “7 ± 2” to organisational design. In the HBS working paper "Span of Control and Span of Attention", the link between cognitive limits (such as Miller’s span of attention) and managerial span of control is not straightforward. While the “magical number seven” is a memorable psychological finding, the application of this limit to organisational design is questionable and lacks robust scientific support.
While we certainly use CognaDev’s CPP toolkit to reveal cognitive processes of managers, it would be too naïve to correlate key managerial responsibilities with the most basic cognitive function of memory.
The Consulting Perspective: From “Right Numbers” to Context
Big consultancies (MBB and Big4, for example) long ago promoted “ideal” spans, often prescribing numbers by organisational layer. Pleading guilty and having served with such consultancies before, the author also used to think that there was structured guidance around a span of control until he pushed a little bit further to reveal a more nuanced picture. Attempts to copy formulas or industry benchmarks often lead to mistakes and new problems, and now, even McKinsey explicitly states: “Chasing a universal span of control number can reduce organisational effectiveness. Optimisation requires understanding the context, tasks, and specific nature of managers’ and teams’ work.” Today, the consensus is that context, not formula, should dictate structure. This evolution reflects a broader shift in management thinking towards situational and evidence-based approaches.
The Manager’s Ability to Lead Effectively: The Key Is Cognitive Capability and Job/Task Complexity
When we say that the key is not the number of direct reports but the manager’s ability to lead the team in a specific context, we mean, first and foremost, the cognitive ability to perform work at the level of complexity required by their role. This is exactly what we successfully assess in almost all our projects.
Management effectiveness depends directly on whether the manager’s level of thinking, analysis, and decision-making matches the complexity of the tasks they are assigned with (or, size of the problems they are solving). In modern organisations, a manager is not just a “task distributor” or “controller”. Their role includes: To succeed at a specific level of complexity in a role, a certain level of cognitive development is required—for example, the ability to see cause-and-effect relationships, think systemically, forecast consequences, or adapt quickly to new conditions.
Otherwise, even a small number of direct reports can lead to overload, mistakes, and declining management quality.
So, ultimately, it is cognitive capability—not formal metrics—that determines how many people and how complex the tasks a specific manager can handle effectively. In different teams and contexts, the “ideal” span of control will differ, and only a deep analysis of managerial roles and cognitive abilities can build a truly effective structure.
What to Do Instead
We argue that the alignment of managers’ cognitive capabilities with the complexity of their roles—not arbitrary spans—is a much better indicator of organisational maturity and, when improved, contributes significantly to organisational health. While SoC might signal structural issues (e.g., overly broad spans at senior levels), it is not inherently meaningful.
In our projects, we regularly assess whether managers’ cognitive abilities match the demands of their roles. This allows us to:
- identify whether a manager can effectively handle the complexity of tasks in their roles,
- understand which development areas are most relevant for improving management effectiveness.
Conclusions
Span of control could be a useful indicator for initial structural diagnostics—nothing more. It does not provide meaningful information about organisational maturity on its own and cannot be used as a universal standard or formula. There is no scientific basis for strict numerical recommendations such as the “7 ± 2” rule. We at ORTALEX are always ready to support your organisation’s health by assessing what really has an impact – the match between managers’ cognitive capabilities and their roles’ levels of work.
Authors:
Pavel Charny, ORTALEX, Managing Partner, Dubai
References
- Bandiera, O., Prat, A., Sadun, R., & Wulf, J. (2014). "Span of Control and Span of Attention". Harvard Business School Working Paper 14-053.
- Booz & Company (now Strategy&/PwC). (2003). "Management Spans and Layers: Streamlining the Out-of-Shape Organization". Strategy& Perspective.
- Cathcart, D., Jeska, S., Karnas, J., Miller, S.E., Pechacek, J.M., & Rheault, L. (2004). "Span of control matters." Journal of Nursing Administration, 34(9), 395-399.
- Hearsum, S. (2024). "No Silver Bullet: Bursting the Bubble of the Organisational Quick Fix".
- Meier, K.J., & Bohte, J. (2000). "Span of Control and Public Organizations: Implementing Luther Gulick’s Research Design." Public Administration Review, 60(2), 158-167.
- Miller, G.A. (1956). "The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information." The Psychological Review, 63(2), 81-97.
- Nelson, E.A. (1966). "Management Theory and the Economic Size of Organizations". Santa Monica, CA: System Development Corporation.
- Van Fleet, D.D., & Bedeian, A.G. (1977). "A History of the Span of Management." Academy of Management Review, 2(3), 356-372.
- Yassine, A., et al. (2005). "Simple Models of Hierarchical Organizations." Management Science*, 51(5), 774-789.
- McKinsey & Company. (2022). "How to identify the right ‘spans of control’ for your organisation."