Management 101: Creating Structures - continued

A title is a title . . . is a title
Titles are cheap. People like them. So, bestow them freely. Make them up if you like. Regardless of whether or not there are management responsibilities associated with them, its a morale thing. For example, "CTO" of a four-person company may not mean much to the world, but it probably means something to the person bearing the title. (I once remember giving someone the title "Director of Geeks")

In the corporate world titles and hierarchies are more serious business. But then, how many levels of Vice President can a company have? VP, EVP, SVP, who knows what else. But in most people's minds, and most situations, real-world hierarchies go (from bottom up) manager, director, VP, CEO/President.

So, in a small to medium size ISP, what you end up with is the head of Tech, head of Sales/Marketing, and head of Customer Service reporting to the Supreme Being. That builds a span of control of 3 for the supreme being. You can then break the groups in half and have Tech Support, Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Billing, etc. Which would give you the ideal span of control of five to seven or so.

Splitting headaches
Once you split your groups, ideally you would figure out who would head up the groups and enlist their help in deciding if those groups need to be further split. Always keep in mind the span of control. The farther down the ladder you go, the bigger it can be, but if the management position involves actually making decisions—as opposed to overseeing time cards and administration duties—a large span of control can be unwieldy.

Two-headed calf
The typical independent ISPs is founded by by two people, a geek, and a salesperson. That automatically splits the company into two groups—with two heads. With two people running the company, either one has to have one more vote than the other, or they must agree on some other type of tie-breaking mechanism.

Early on, the two heads, Sales and Tech, need to put their heads together to designate some type of General/Office Manager. The General/Office Manager takes care of administration and day to day operations. The General Manager may report to either of the two heads, but usually to the one with more control. Tech and customer support could then answer to either of the heads, or if it is a small group, to the General Manager. Network engineers and higher level techs answer to the Tech head, and Sales/Marketing answer to the Sales head.

This might be clearer with an org chart—it certainly would be a lot easier to explain—but that's Management 101.

—End

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