The HŪMNZ Element: Issue 30 - The Number Every CEO Widens First

Span of control is the most benchmarked figure in organizational design and one of the least predictive. The average you get reported is hiding where the problem actually sits.

Author

Tim Dennis
September 08, 2026

💡 Editor's Note

Every org design conversation I have sat in eventually arrives at the same number.

How many people should report to one manager?

It is a satisfying question. It has a numeric answer, it can be benchmarked against peers, and it can be changed by decision rather than by effort.

What if it is close to the least important number in the room?

Before you redraw the org chart, find out where execution is already stuck.

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Executive Brief

Bottom line: Span of control is the most benchmarked number in organizational design and one of the least predictive, and the average that gets reported to you is hiding the small group of managers where the real problem sits.

Gallup published an analysis on January 13, 2026 drawing on 44,025 employees, 16,442 managers, and a meta-analysis of 312 studies covering 92,252 teams. It reports the average span of control rising from 8.2 direct reports in 2013 to 12.1 in 2025 — close to a 50% increase in a decade.

The median never moved. It has held at five to six.

Which means the average is not describing a general widening. It is describing a tail: 66% of US managers still oversee fewer than ten people, while 13% now carry 25 or more.

And when Gallup looked at what actually predicts how a team performs, team size was not it.

In 30 seconds

  • Average span of control rose from 8.2 direct reports in 2013 to 12.1 in 2025 while the median held at five to six, according to Gallup's January 2026 analysis — so the mean is being pulled by a minority of very large teams, not a broad shift.

  • Employee engagement tracked feedback quality rather than team size: 67 to 70% where manager feedback was rated strongest and 22 to 26% where it was weakest, and those bands held at every team size including teams of 25 or more.

  • Stop reporting average span. Report the named list of managers above 20 reports, and measure feedback quality by manager before you redraw anything.

⚠️ Four signals leaders should be watching this week

1. Why has your average span of control stopped describing your managers?

Signal: Span of control is benchmarked as an average, so it gets managed as an average.

Evidence: Gallup's January 13, 2026 analysis reports average span rising from 8.2 direct reports in 2013 to 10.9 in 2024 and 12.1 in 2025, while the median has held at five to six. Within the US manager population, 37% oversee fewer than five people and 66% fewer than ten, but 13% now carry 25 or more.

Implication: Most organizations do not have broadly wider spans. They have a minority of managers absorbing enormous ones, and an average that reports the situation as fine.

Action: Stop reporting average span of control. Report the count of managers above 20 direct reports, with names. A ratio is a metric. A list is a decision.

2. Is span of control actually driving your engagement numbers?

Signal: Team performance slips after a reorg, and wider spans get named as the cause.

Evidence: In the meta-analysis behind Gallup's January 2026 findings, covering 312 studies and 92,252 teams, employee engagement tracked the quality of manager feedback rather than team size. Where employees rated feedback strongest, engagement ran 67 to 70%. Where they rated it weakest, 22 to 26%. Those bands were near identical at every team size, including teams of 25 or more and teams under five.

Implication: That is roughly a 45-point swing with almost no relationship to how many people report to someone. A team of four under a manager who gives no real feedback does worse than a team of 25 under one who does.

Action: Before you redraw the chart, measure feedback quality manager by manager. If that variable is untracked, span of control is not the thing to fix first.

3. What is your managers' actual job description?

Signal: Managers take on more reports, and nothing comes off the plate to make room.

Evidence: Gallup found 97% of managers still carry individual-contributor responsibilities, taking a median 40% of their time. Manager engagement held steady at 37% across all team sizes where that IC work stayed at or below 40% of the role. Once it exceeded 40%, engagement slid with size, down to 32% for managers with 25 or more reports.

Implication: Span of control is not the load. Span plus unshed individual-contributor work is the load. That combination is what most reorgs create, and it is not what any of them measure.

Action: For every manager whose span you widen, name what came off their list. If the answer is nothing, you did not restructure the work. You added to it.

4. Why does manager selection outrank org design here?

Signal: The manager layer gets redesigned structurally, while who sits in it is treated as a given.

Evidence: In Gallup's data, manager engagement ran 46% among managers with high natural talent for the role against 27% among those with low talent, at the same workload — a 19-point spread that has nothing to do with structure. Separately, only 16% of employees said their most recent conversation with their manager was extremely meaningful.

Implication: The variance that matters here sits between managers, not between org charts. Gallup's own conclusion is that engaged teams of 12 or more can thrive under effective management, which is double the current median team size.

Action: Ask which of your managers were selected for the role and which were promoted into it because there was no alternative. The answer tells you which problem you are actually solving.

Stat of the Week

45 points

The gap in employee engagement between teams whose managers give the strongest feedback and those whose managers give the weakest — holding at roughly the same size whether the team has four people or twenty-five, per Gallup's January 2026 analysis.

Team size is the variable that fits on a slide. Feedback quality is the one that moves the number.

Source: Gallup, span of control analysis published January 13, 2026, drawing on 44,025 employees, 16,442 managers, and a meta-analysis of 312 studies covering 92,252 teams.

The Core Question

Widening a span is a structural change. It can be approved in one meeting, drawn on one chart, and reported as a completed action.

Improving how a manager actually manages is an operating change. It requires someone to do something differently every week, indefinitely, with no completion date.

Only one of those shows up in the engagement data, and it is not the one that fits in a board pack.

Are we redesigning the manager layer because the structure is wrong, or because changing who sits in it is harder?

The VALŪE lens: Span of control is an input you can set. Manager quality is a capability you have to build. The first is a decision, the second is a program, and the data says only the second one changes the outcome.

There is no benchmark that will tell you which of your managers should not be one.

Know a CEO in the middle of an org redesign? Send this on.

Until next time,

The HŪMNZ Element — Weekly Pulse

If this was useful, forward it to one person: a CEO about to sign off on an org redesign, or whoever owns the manager population.