How Span of Control Impacts the Quality of Work

Span of Control is a concept that I learned in my emergency services training both in the fire service and law enforcement corrections. Yet this topic is not something I read or hear about often, if ever, in the engineering community. The idea behind this concept is based on how many people a leader can effectively manage in a given scenario. In the emergency services world, this normally works best in the range of 2 to 5 people. In the business world, this range may extend upwards to 10 or more subordinates to one leader. There are a lot of factors that go into determining how many subordinates one leader can effectively manage. Each and every situation will be different.