Do You Know Who Your Team Leaders Are?
In theory, an organization can identify all its hierarchically-defined management leaders down through the levels, although in practice it rarely does. Much more important for the operating organization is the network of all the people in leadership roles guiding and coordinating the work of other people who may play multiple roles in many overlapping teams. The current combination of a proliferation of specialized teams and an exploding use of contractors means that organizations are increasingly blind to their real leadership network and the key metrics of team span and organization size that this leadership represents.
Hierarchy managers
  • The formal hierarchy of employee direct reports is organized into managers (positions with direct reports) and staff (positions with no direct reports) that rollup through a set of nested containers to the organization as a whole
  • Matrix management adds to span and size of some hierarchy managers; a few new managers are identified (formal staff members who are team leaders because of one or more matrix reports)
Specialized team leaders
  • Any position may lead one or more special teams, meaning, in some cases, positions that are formally staff may in fact be leaders of key resource and workflow teams
  • A manager position that may have only a few direct reports may have as well many more team connections that are contributing to a much higher management load that the formal system recognizes
Team leaders of contractors
  • Contractors can add a huge population of people that is largely invisible to the formal system working in roles supporting and entwined with the population of employees
  • All hierarchy managers and team leaders may have sometimes greatly increased size and span in their organizations when contractors are added
  • Many unrecognized staff may be direct line leaders of contractor teams
  • Some staff may have an executive leadership role for a multi-level contractor organization
  • Contractor leaders may manage a highly complex all-contractor organization
Network Leadership Reality
Networks of teams with both reporting and specialized memberships populated by employees and contractors

How big is this line manager’s team? From a 2-level line management team of 7 employees to a 4-level executive leadership organization of 25 positions with mixed membership links creating 5 additional relative leadership roles