The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - How to Manage Span of Control in Team Design
Episode Date: June 23, 2025When leaders try to manage too many people directly, clarity disappears and momentum suffers. In this episode, I break down the importance of span of control across public safety, healthcare IT, and p...roject teams. Whether you're building a department, spinning up an incident team, or planning a go-live, the rule of 3 to 7 direct reports still holds. Five is the sweet spot—but there are exceptions.We’ll walk through how ICS uses structure to maintain speed under pressure, how project teams should plan their structure during resource alignment, and why we must review roles and objectives regularly to stay on track. Whether you lead full-time staff or ad hoc teams, this episode is your blueprint for sustainable team design.People first. Combined process. Progress together.
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Welcome back to the People Process Progress podcast.
Today we're digging into a foundational principle
of leadership that applies across emergency response,
healthcare IT, and project delivery.
It's called span of control.
The core idea is simple.
When you try to manage too many people directly,
communication breaks down, decision making slows down,
and your team drifts, they drift apart.
The incident command system,
which is used by public safety and emergency management
and the largely governmental systems
or ICS, recommends a span of control between three and seven.
Five is the magic number.
So it's that sweet spot where a leader can stay connected
but not overwhelmed.
But here's the key, it's not just for emergencies, right?
Spanning control is something we need to build
into our day-to-day structures.
Whether you're running a department,
leading a project team, or preparing for a planned
event, these principles help you lead with clarity, consistency, and calm.
Before we expand on that and talk about times when it's okay to go above seven, let's set
some ground rules. Hey everybody, it's your host, Kevin Pennell again.
Thanks for coming back.
Please visit the peopleprocessprogress.com website.
You can connect with me there.
You can get the Stability Equation book.
You can take an assessment to figure out which area of ownership, mindfulness, movement,
boundaries, connections, sleep, and faith you should work on more, maybe a bunch of
them.
I work on those every day.
They're not perfect all the time, and that's part of the deal.
So let's get back into this span of control concept.
First let's start with the people, this delegation mapping.
One of the best ways to stay grounded is leaders know exactly who you're responsible for and
who your team members should turn to when they need help.
And if your team can't answer that quickly, you might have for and who your team members should turn to when they need help.
If your team can't answer that quickly, you might have a problem with your structure.
So in ICS or the incident command system, the incident commander, the person in charge
of everything, whether it's a flood response or preparation for a big sporting event, they
don't have 10 people reporting to them.
They typically have three to five.
There's section chiefs and these officers like public safety or public information and
safety and they each have a slice of the whole operation. The logic's very transferable. There's section chiefs and these officers like public safety or public information and safety, right?
And they each have a slice of the whole operation.
The logic's very transferable.
Let's say you're managing a program.
You have 10 direct reports.
You should ask yourself realistically,
can I realistically coach, support,
and guide each of them on a regular basis?
So I'm gonna ask you to try this.
Map your current org chart, draw the lines,
put your name, don't worry about making it perfect,
just make it visible, and look at how many people
report to you directly.
Look at how many report to your leads, if you have leads.
And if you or someone else has more than seven
direct reports, especially in high complexity roles,
it's probably too many, and maybe it's something
you want to talk to your leadership about,
and see what you can do to break that up.
That said, there are exceptions.
In steady, low-risk environments
where the work is more routine,
like let's say administrative teams,
maybe help desks, batch processing units,
doing traffic control.
The span of control can stretch out to 10,
and this is something that a law enforcement officer,
one of my good friends taught me, is,
hey, yeah, but they're all doing, you know,
controlling a traffic port,
and of course that could escalate
from zero to 100 immediately,
but they're not doing a dynamic entry like a SWAT team.
So even a little more without much risk,
so more than 10 that is.
So the key is recognizing the difference
between managing 10 people during relatively simple tasks
versus trying to manage and directly lead 10 people
during critical, complex work streams.
So, and here's a leadership truth, right?
It's not weakness to delegate.
In fact, it's good leadership, it's a responsibility,
and you're empowering your people,
and good leaders create a structure
that empowers others to lead also,
instead of having to control every level of the org chart.
All right, again, so for the people,
we're gonna know who needs to do what.
We're going to right size how many people need to do that.
So let's get into process, kind of role segmentation.
So now it begins with the structure before it starts.
In the Incident Command System, we have a specific meeting called the tactics meeting.
The Incident Commander, operations, planning, largely operations, planning, logistics, and
safety.
The Incident Commander for sure can be there,
but they've delegated this to operations
to really make the planning,
because operations are subject matter expert, right?
So we get in a room and we start going through
the objectives based on the objectives,
how are we gonna meet these?
And that's where we build our org structure from.
So that's why when I've talked about the foundational five,
it starts with leaders intent, objectives,
then org chart, right?
We sketch out an org chart. Right?
We sketch out an org chart or we have pre-filled laminated ones that are on the wall.
Right?
We identify how many supervisors we need to make this band of control appropriate.
That's where the kind of science or the art rather more than science comes into play is,
oh, that area is pretty static.
There don't, you know, there can be more people reporting to one supervisor versus this area
where there's moving water,
that kind of stuff.
So it's a structure that matches the scale
and risk of the event.
In project management, the equivalent to me
is when we have resource alignment
with the project manager
and the functional resource managers
whose team members work for them,
but we're asking for their time for temporary work
on this project.
So before we move into execution,
we have to have all this ready, all our plans ready, right?
What skills do we need?
What's the timeline?
What's the complexity?
Are we staffed appropriately to deliver the outcome,
which includes planning for it, building it,
testing it, training on it, some go live support,
and maybe after go live support.
So when we do skip that, we can overload resources
if we don't have enough,
and we can also have too many cooks in the kitchen if we have too that, we can overload resources if we don't have enough, and we can also have
too many cooks in the kitchen if we have too many, right?
And so one team may end up with 10 people reporting them
and deliver unrelated work, and then there's nuclear path,
and then that's when gaps show up, right?
And they can show up pretty quickly.
The good thing is they show up quickly
so you can pivot and fix them.
In the Instant Command System, and folks that get
in Instant Management Teams, we learn about all the forms,
and one of those is called the assignment list, or work assignment list, it's a command system and folks that get an incident management teams We learn about all the forms and one of those is called the assignment list or work assignment list
It's a couple different ways, but it's an ICS or incident command system 204 and it says what's the incident name?
When's it happening? What branch division group are you in? Where do you show up?
Who's the operations section chief branch director division group soup? Basically it says where do you go? Who do you report to?
Then there's a resource assignment piece just in the top two-thirds of it the top half will say and there's only ten rows
Right and it says what's the resource so that'd be like me. Who's the leader?
How many people are in that team or group etc? What's their contact? Where do they go?
And so you can have forms and should use forms like this. It's an amazing one
I've actually used it to deploy devices in a hospital. It's very effective and it by default limits
the amount of teams that you can put in one group
or branch or division or whatever you're gonna do to 10.
And typically again, we're gonna try
and stay lower than that, but the form itself,
the tool helps us, so part of our process is
how do we optimize the size of our teams
and if it's too many, we go wait, I'm running out of room
and you go well, let's look at how we can fix our span and control.
Let's look at the complexity again.
Let's go back to the drawing board.
Because again, you can make a plan
and then realize, holy smokes, this is wrong
or we need to optimize it or we need more people
or less people and you just rework it, right?
But the structure should be very intentional
in your process and it should be a discussion.
Again, in ICS, it's operations, your subject matter expert,
it's planning, the people helping with the whole process
and tracking resources, logistics,
who's gonna get you all the stuff you want.
Finance admin, they're gonna pay for it or not.
And then safety, are those good calls?
They can also guide that, right?
So safety in the public safety world, obviously,
is number one.
And they're gonna help guide if it's too many or too little
and then operations can have a chat.
In the program and project manager world,
it's most often not a safety issue,
but it could be financial.
It could be what's the workload of that team,
that maybe we need to time it a little better.
Is it the right skill?
Do we need to bring in a contractor?
So you're really negotiating how you get those resources
more so than what the safety factor is of it.
But the key is that it's a discussion.
It's an intentional buildup of the org chart,
not just put them over there, have them report to this person, but we've really thought through what's the best for the team members?
What's the best for the supervisor? What's the best for the outcomes?
We're trying to get whether it's a day-to-day operational stuff or whether it's a specific project or a specific response
So progress, how do we how do we audit our structure right because?
Teams evolve like I said earlier,
they don't just sit there.
People are gonna be out there,
they're gonna be tired, they're gonna work.
Areas, let's say like flooding, sandbag,
water's gonna recede,
we don't need as many people there anymore.
So we need to review the risks, the timeline, the budgets,
and our team structures.
So let's say for a department, for an organization,
let's look every quarter,
or the beginning of a new project phase,
and audit the span of control.
What still makes sense, what doesn't make sense, right?
Look for leads who are overloaded.
If you've got 15, 20 people reporting
to one lead or manager, that's a lot.
So look for team members,
maybe you don't have a clear supervisor
or support structure, and talk to them, right?
We're not just counting the people,
we're checking in with them.
Are you clear on what you do?
Do you feel supported?
Do you feel like we have given you enough accountability?
Or do you have too much?
Do you have the bandwidth?
Or are you just tapped out?
So in ICS, we are, every operational period,
let's say it's 12 hours, it's a good round number,
we're gonna get back together as leaders,
as the section chiefs, as the command staff,
and go, oh, the objective's still valid.
Did we complete one? We only have two out of three left?
Does the structure still make sense if we completed a bunch of stuff if we stopped the fire if we slowed the flooding if we
triaged all the patients
Cool, what else we're gonna say what work what didn't we can do a quick after-action review and adjust on the fly where adjustments needed
Right did we over task and people who was stretched too thin?
And there's there's really good kind of three up, three down,
what worked well, what didn't, what do we need to change?
And project management, if you're doing Agile and Scrum,
this is a retro, right, a retrospective review
on what we just did, the week or two weeks
or three weeks before, or at the end of kind
of a traditional waterfall, it's a lessons learned session.
Right, it's not just for the end of a project though,
you can build those in, do them every month,
do them every couple months or whatever that rhythm is,
but look back and say, hey, are we still clear
on what our assignment is?
Do we still know what the definition done is?
Are we holding true to the leader's intent
and the objectives that we set?
And how is the team functioning?
What's the feedback from the team?
What's the tempo of the team?
How do they feel overall?
So as planners, process facilitators, leaders, right,
when we take part in this routine,
we're not just gonna wait and react,
we are designing for better outcomes every time, right?
So we're gonna constantly be evolving,
we're gonna be dynamic.
So where does this show up, right?
It plays out, let's say, three examples.
Day-to-day teams, ad hoc incident teams, and planned events.
So let's say your day-to-day structure,
our project management office, our information technology
teams, business departments, whatever, right?
This is your baseline.
If a manager has 12 direct reports,
doing wildly different work,
they're probably putting out fires and not leading forward.
That's hard to do.
It's hard to set them up that way when everyone's so busy.
So think about how we can reset our structure
to support our leaders and not drown them.
Second is ad hoc incident teams.
So these spin up fast.
This is like when I was on a team,
a place in the southern part of our state says,
hey, we need people to come help us plan and do logistics
because our whole town flooded.
Cool, who can go?
The call goes out, seven of us get together.
We get our packs, we get our cargo pants on, of course,
all our gear to do whatever we're gonna do,
and then we go.
So whether it's a cyber attack or a flood, like I just mentioned, right, we don't have
time.
Well, let me belay that.
We do have time to figure it out on the fly, but we need to get practiced in doing that
and think about how can I use these ICS principles to assign leads, keep Spana control tight,
communicate early.
And then if you're part of a team going somewhere, how do you explain that to the people
that asked you to come help?
So if they wanna supervise everybody
and there's 57 people, you can say,
well, here's what we can do for you.
Here's how we can help the outcomes, right?
So you're not, particularly if you're
an intimate management team member
and a project manager where you're asked
to come in and help, you also gotta be able
to teach people about why you're doing what you're doing.
The third thing is planned events, right?
These are planned go lives or in public safety You also gotta be able to teach people about why you're doing what you're doing. The third thing is planned events, right?
These are planned go lives or in public safety,
like an annual festival or a run that happens every year.
Exercises, that counts too, right?
They're not no-nitus, maybe high tempo
because there's a lot of public people coming in
or a lot of money that worried about something like that,
right, but you can treat it like a response.
You can build the structure, sign the rules,
watch your span and control.
You just have more time typically for those. But no matter what the assignment is, what the
environment is, the principle is the same. The tighter your spay and control in complex situations,
the better your outcomes. That's why search and rescue teams don't go in with 35 people reporting
one supervisor. They're segmented into different leads and the team that goes in has a handful of
people in it.
So here's your mission for the week, people process progress, podcast listeners, take
30 minutes, map your current span and control.
How many people report to you?
How many people report to the people that report to them?
How many people report across the department?
Could be your full-time team, a project team, and ask yourself, is the work high risk, low
risk?
Is it complex? is it routine?
Can it delegate more?
Can we simplify the structure before we scale it?
And then think about how you're gonna track that.
Is it regular check-ins with your people?
Are you gonna just have the org chart up on the wall
and look at it every quarter and just say,
hey, is this still valid?
How's everybody feeling?
But to wrap things up, it's not just an emergency tool
like I mentioned, it's a leadership habit. We're aiming for five that's a magic number in a perfect world,
which is possible depending on what's happening. Stay between three and seven if you can, especially
if the work is complex. Stretch it out to 10, maybe a couple more if it's very routine
and the risk is low. But build the structure before the chaos hits because then you have
a solid foundation. Your people know they're supported. They have enough bandwidth and then they can scale up or down and revisit it like I said,
right? And trust your people by giving them clear roles and clear space to lead. Remember,
everybody keep those people first, work a combined process, and let's make progress together.
Thank you for helping me make progress on the People Process Progress Podcast. You can follow me on X and Instagram, at PanellLKG, P-A-N-N-E-L-L-K-G.
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