I noticed that many managers only had four or five direct reports. Is this an IBM thing? Came in through an aquisition.
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A manager needs to have a minimum of 6 direct reports. There have been some strange gyrations to achieve this within some organizations. Note that ‘matrixed’ People don’t count. This is direct-reports.
I have noticed the same thing and yes those teams eventually will get reassigned, or they will merge just takes time. Even with all these RA's still seems we have way too many managers and people keep quitting, which makes the ratios disproportionate with so few reports. Also I think thousands of jobs by design do not have backfill options to gradually phase out positions.
A manager with few reports is in an uncomfortable place - they justify this year but if they are marked for elimination then you can expect fewer reports next year. Look for a sullen attitude and know we have a dead man walking. Pity the reports for believing in the manager.
Depends on a group. In GBS, on a project, a manager would manage 2 to 15 folks. Its not a prescribed range as I saw mgrs with no folks or more than 15, its very rare tho. Been with GBS for over 15 years