Power Character

Organisation Design2 Jun 2026

The Spans and Layers Myth

EDITORIAL IMAGE — 16:9

Flattening an organisation without moving decision rights just gives the same bottleneck a bigger team.

Every few years a benchmark circulates claiming an ideal span of control. It is usually eight.

Span is an output, not a target. It follows from how much judgement a manager has to exercise per report — which is a function of where decisions actually sit.