Hbr how many direct reports

Add copies before sharing with your team. Product : RH. Pages: 9. Related Topics: Career planning , Managing employees , Leadership ,. Newsletter Promo Summaries and excerpts of the latest books, special offers, and more from Harvard Business Review Press. Sign up. This Product Also Appears In. Buy Together. Related Products. HBR Digital Article. By Rebecca Knight ,. View Details. By Ron Carucci ,. By Ron Ashkenas ,. Industry and Background Note. I can think of several people who were leading businesses, beating their forecasts, able to attract quality people—as long as the market was good.

The CEO compact has two sides, of course, and I know my subordinates will do their jobs most effectively if they can expect a few things of me as well. Every quarter the boss should get up in front of her team and explain the financial results and the progress of any operational or strategic initiative.

This provides a crucial context for the work. If I show him the actual numbers, he has some perspective on why and to what degree cash flow is an issue, and a better sense of how his job contributes to the enterprise as a whole. In addition to team goals, each person should know exactly what individual goals he or she is going to be measured on over a given period and where to invest precious time. When goals and objectives are clear, promotion and bonus decisions can be based on merit.

As a CEO, I never felt uncomfortable when somebody came to ask me why I had put one person into a role rather than another. If Joe gives a presentation, I owe him feedback right on the spot. When the annual review comes, it should be simple. Forget HR jargon that attempts to disguise reality. An effective performance review tells the employee what he does well, what he could do better, and how he and his boss can work together to fill any gaps—no complicated forms or ambiguous language.

See A Simple Assessment. People should expect me to make decisions as soon as I have the information I need, and not to be careless or impetuous but to give clear, unambiguous answers. At Allied, a salesperson who was working on a deal with Boeing, say, might ask me to place a phone call—not because I could sell the job any better but because I represented the organisation. The problem is, people are often reluctant to get the boss involved for fear that asking for help will be perceived as a sign of weakness.

I consider asking for help a sign not of weakness but of self-confidence. Most people can handle good news on their own; they turn to the boss when they need some help. Demonstrate honesty and candour: People spend far too much time figuring out how to tell others something unpleasant—how to deliver the news in a diplomatic way. This is common in performance appraisals. When I visit companies that I consult to, the first thing I ask leaders for is copies of their appraisals of subordinates, and I am continually amazed at the avoidance in their language.

Look at the difference between vague and specific characterisations:. The language on the left means nothing. If I can say something sensitively and diplomatically, so much the better. Offer an equitable compensation plan: People want to be compensated fairly, in a way that reflects their contributions, and they want to understand how the compensation plan works. Employees should be able to estimate the size of their bonuses at the end of the year, because if the boss has also set clear goals and objectives, they know whether they have lived up to them, and they have a good idea of how the company did overall.

Maintaining these behaviours helps to show when red tape is encroaching on productivity—and helps to minimise the effect. These behaviours will make you a better employee and may help you get promoted. They will certainly serve you well should you leave for another job.

The purpose, after all, is to improve team and company performance, which should accelerate your own growth. This article was published in Harvard Business Review, April All rights reserved. Of course the assumption behind the entire concept is that the job of the manager is to control subordinates, which was certainly the case in traditional hierarchies. No longer is her primary function to aggregate work done by subordinates and control their activities; rather it is to foster teamwork and communication, while providing inspiration and direction.

Once managers stop trying to exert personal control over subordinates, the number of direct reports can increase substantially. So instead of checking up on people they began to add value in other ways — through strategy development, increased customer contact, process improvement, and coaching. Once spans of control are increased, it is then possible to compress the number of hierarchical layers or levels. For example, instead of one manager having five direct reports — each with three people reporting to them — the middle layer could be eliminated and the manager would then have fifteen subordinates.

Not only does having fewer managers dramatically reduce costs, it also makes it simpler for ideas and information to flow up and down the organization. When there are too many layers, communication from the top of the organization to the bottom is like the game of telephone — where a message changes as it works its way through many different people.