3 ms·

I'd heard this anecdotally in the past, apparently there's some meat to it. The Marines have this number set to 3. Marines obviously have different scenarios

I'd heard this anecdotally in the past, apparently there's some meat to it. The Marines have this number set to 3. Marines obviously have different scenarios they have to deal with than most organizations. But it's still an interesting idea. https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/the-us-marine-corps-uses-rule-of-3-to-organize-almost-everything-heres-how-learning-it-21-years-ago-changed-my-life.html https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/the-us-marine-corps-uses-...

martin_a 5y ago
> The Marines have this number set to 3. For firefighters in Germany this is, more or less, defined to be 5. A group (which is one of the pre-defined tactial units) consists of 9 people: The leader, three troops of two, one machinist, one "Melder" (kind of the guy/girl for "special tasks", helping with whatever is necessary). The leader commands the troop leaders, machinist and "Melder". This is expected and taught as the amount of people you can actively manage and take care of in stressful situations like deployments. edit: for larger deployments you'll have platoon leaders which will command a number of group leaders. for even larger deployments there'll be another layer of command so each platoon leader will only have to lead a set number of group leaders, too.
- throw1234651234 5y ago
  This is going to be true of more professional military specialists as well. A Special Forces team will have an officer leading 4 sergeants - med, comms, weapons, and construction(/destruction). This is more of an exception rather than the rule though. I don't see how people are supposed to reasonably manage 10+ reports. At that point they are just a figurehead.
  - martin_a 5y ago
    > I don't see how people are supposed to reasonably manage 10+ reports. True! I'm leading 5 people at work and I find that enough most of the time, as I still have projects that I'm actively working on, too. If there are more people to come, I'll ask to integrate some kind of "team lead" for some of them, before all the work I do is micromanage and respond to mails.
wenc 5y ago
That's fascinating. 3 seems like a good average number. I think there are minimums too. It depends on whether your reports are experienced or not. If they're experienced, any number is fine. However, if they're inexperienced (i.e. interns, or fresh out of college), you really need to manage 2 or more. 1 is weirdly a bad number. Managing a single inexperienced direct report is truly challenging and suboptimal, both for the manager and the report. Having no peers to calibrate themselves to, the report feels insecure and is either too eager to please or becomes overly dependent. It's hard for the manager to know how to manage too -- you want to avoid micromanaging but everything you do is going to carry undue emotional weight on the report because they have no other reference points because they have no peers. If I had to do it again, I'd rather have at least 2 direct reports or none at all. 1 is just not good.
twoodfin 5y ago
I had an instructor at MIT who claimed he could prove via circuit theory that the correct number of direct reports for any manager was e.

martin_a 5y ago

> The Marines have this number set to 3. For firefighters in Germany this is, more or less, defined to be 5. A group (which is one of the pre-defined tactial units) consists of 9 people: The leader, three troops of two, one machinist, one "Melder" (kind of the guy/girl for "special tasks", helping with whatever is necessary). The leader commands the troop leaders, machinist and "Melder". This is expected and taught as the amount of people you can actively manage and take care of in stressful situations like deployments. edit: for larger deployments you'll have platoon leaders which will command a number of group leaders. for even larger deployments there'll be another layer of command so each platoon leader will only have to lead a set number of group leaders, too.

throw1234651234 5y ago
This is going to be true of more professional military specialists as well. A Special Forces team will have an officer leading 4 sergeants - med, comms, weapons, and construction(/destruction). This is more of an exception rather than the rule though. I don't see how people are supposed to reasonably manage 10+ reports. At that point they are just a figurehead.
- martin_a 5y ago
  > I don't see how people are supposed to reasonably manage 10+ reports. True! I'm leading 5 people at work and I find that enough most of the time, as I still have projects that I'm actively working on, too. If there are more people to come, I'll ask to integrate some kind of "team lead" for some of them, before all the work I do is micromanage and respond to mails.

wenc 5y ago

That's fascinating. 3 seems like a good average number. I think there are minimums too. It depends on whether your reports are experienced or not. If they're experienced, any number is fine. However, if they're inexperienced (i.e. interns, or fresh out of college), you really need to manage 2 or more. 1 is weirdly a bad number. Managing a single inexperienced direct report is truly challenging and suboptimal, both for the manager and the report. Having no peers to calibrate themselves to, the report feels insecure and is either too eager to please or becomes overly dependent. It's hard for the manager to know how to manage too -- you want to avoid micromanaging but everything you do is going to carry undue emotional weight on the report because they have no other reference points because they have no peers. If I had to do it again, I'd rather have at least 2 direct reports or none at all. 1 is just not good.

twoodfin 5y ago

I had an instructor at MIT who claimed he could prove via circuit theory that the correct number of direct reports for any manager was e.