Harvard Business Review, April 2012
If senior executives are feeling ever-increasing
pressure on their time—and few would suggest that’s not the case—why
would they add more to their plates? It seems counter intuitive, but
according to our research into C-level roles over the past two decades,
the CEO’s average span of control, measured by the number of direct
reports, has doubled, rising from about five in the mid-1980s to almost
10 in the mid-2000s. The leap in the chief executive’s purview is all
the more remarkable when you consider that companies today are vastly
more complex, globally dispersed, and strictly scrutinized than those of
previous generations.