Span-of-Control Audit: Stress-Testing a Growing Team's Reporting Lines
Objective: Given a synthetic 34-person marketing org chart for TBO Tek, apply the lesson's span-of-control and structure-by-headcount rules to flag exactly which reporting lines are broken and rank the fixes.
You're a marketing operations analyst at TBO Tek, the Gurugram-based B2B travel distribution platform that listed on the NSE/BSE in May 2024. Headcount has tripled in 18 months and nobody has touched the org chart since the team was five people.
Read the current org chart, apply the lesson's 5-8 direct-report rule and its centralized/functional/pod-model guidance, flag every violation, and rank the fixes by urgency.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
Free tier boards handle a 34-box chart with no paywall
The process
1 step
Step 01 of 01
The lesson's 10-50 person stage says functional directors should emerge for demand gen, content, ops, and product marketing, each managing a small team, with 4-5 directors reporting to the CMO. Span of control outside five to eight direct reports signals a missing layer or a bottleneck.
TBO Tek's chart: CMO has 5 direct reports (4 directors + 1 unassigned Marketing Ops Analyst). Director of Demand Gen has 11 direct reports (paid, SEO, email, webinars, 2 regional leads, 5 specialists). There is no Marketing Ops director; 4 ops staff report straight to the CMO. The Product Marketing Manager reports to the Head of Product, not to any marketing director. Which single fix is most urgent?
Procedure
- Recreate the chart as boxes and arrows, one box per role
- Count direct reports under every manager and circle any count outside 5-8
- Check whether each of the five core functions (brand, demand gen, content, product marketing, ops) has a named owner
- Flag any role reporting outside the marketing org entirely
- Rank the flagged issues by how many people or how much budget each one touches
FINDINGS (ranked by urgency) 1. Director, Demand Gen: 11 direct reports (healthy range 5-8) — bottleneck risk, this director is the single busiest node on the chart 2. Marketing Ops: no director, 4 analysts report straight to CMO — function has no dedicated owner despite CMO span already at 5 3. Product Marketing Manager reports to Head of Product, not marketing — the bridge role has drifted fully into one department NOT FLAGGED (healthy) - Director, Content: 6 direct reports - Director, Brand: 4 direct reports (slightly under range, acceptable at this headcount)
Healthy
Every manager has 5-8 direct reports and all five core functions have a named owner inside marketing.
Unhealthy
A director with 11 direct reports while a whole function (ops) has zero dedicated leadership and reports piecemeal to the CMO.
What this means
The demand-gen overload and the missing ops director are the same root cause: headcount grew but the layer of leadership underneath the CMO didn't. Fix the missing layer first; it relieves both problems at once.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| One director has 11 direct reports and misses 1:1s | Split the demand-gen team into two sub-teams (paid+SEO, email+webinars) under a new manager layer | dev ticket |
| Ops analysts report straight to the CMO with no dedicated advocate | Promote the senior ops analyst to Director, Marketing Ops and move the other 3 under them | half day |
Final deliverable
A ranked list of every span-of-control and missing-function violation on TBO Tek's org chart, with the single highest-priority fix flagged first and a one-line reason for the ranking.
See a reference example
Awfis Space Solutions, Marketing Org Audit (excerpt) URGENT 1. Director, Enterprise Demand Gen: 9 direct reports across 6 cities — split by region before Q3 hiring adds 3 more WATCH 2. Brand and Content share one director: fine at current headcount, revisit above 40 marketers HEALTHY - Marketing Ops: 5 direct reports to a dedicated director, added last quarter - Product Marketing: reports to VP Marketing, not Product — bridge role intact
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- Flags all three real violations (demand-gen overload, missing ops director, misplaced product marketing) against the lesson's rules
- Does not flag the Brand director's 4 direct reports as broken — under-range at this headcount is acceptable, not a violation
- Ranks the fixes by people/budget impact, not by which one appears first on the chart