Span of Influence: [Internal Locus of Control] [Demand Element]: The span of influence, according to Simons (2005), corresponds to the width of the net that a team needs to cast in collecting data, probing for new information, and attempting to influence the work of others. Leaders can widen the span when they want to stimulate their employees and teams to think outside the box to develop new ways of serving customers, increasing internal efficiencies, or adapting to changes in external markets. Leaders can widen a team’s span of influence by redesigning the task assigned to this employee or project team. For instance, the team can be encouraged to enter into a cross-functional relationship with another team.
Leaders can also adjust an employee’s or team’s span of influence through the level of goals they set. Although the nature of a team’s goals drives its span of accountability (by determining the trade-offs team members can make), the level or difficulty, drives her sphere of influence. As Simons (2005) observed, a team that is given a stretch goal will often be forced to seek out and interact with more people and other teams than a team or person whose goal is set at a much lower level. Finally, leaders can use accounting and control systems to adjust the span of influence (e.g. assigning indirect cost allocations to the team).
Leaders can narrow the Span by requiring members of their organization to pay attention only to their own jobs; do not allocate costs across units; use single reporting lines; and reward individual performance. Conversely, they can widen the Span by injecting creative tension through structures, systems, and goals. For example, the leader can form cross-unit teams, matrix structures, and cross-unit cost allocations.
We can once again move into the heart of this third span —and we will find Motivation. In this case, it is all about motivating other people —we influence them by increasing their desire to (and potentially ability) to achieve some important (shared) goal. A job holder or team members are likely to gain much more support in an organization (yet also increase expectations) if they hold the potential of influencing (motivating) other projects in the organization.
At the formal level, we find Enablement and Assistance —which makes for Tangible Influence: This is the direct way in which an employee or members of a team can benefit others in the organization and, more specifically, contribute to the success of other projects. At the informal level we find Encouragement which is a form of Intangible Influence: These are the indirect ways in which individual employees and teams can be champions or ever-present “colleagues” to others in the organization. These valuable members of an organization can be motivating cheerleaders and admiring observers on the sidelines.
Span of Support: [External Locus of Control] [Supply Element]: This fourth span concerns the amount of help a project team can expect from teams and individual people in other organizational units – how much commitment from others the team needs in order to implement strategy. Simons notes that wide spans of support become critically important when customer loyalty is vital to strategy implementation or when organizational design is highly complex because of sophisticated technologies and a complex value chain. Teams cannot adjust an employee’s span of support in isolation —for the span is largely determined by people’s sense of shared responsibilities, which in turn stems from an organization’s culture and values. For a leader to narrow the Span of support they can use leveraged, highly individualized rewards, and clearly single out winners and losers. For them to widen the Span, leaders must build shared responsibilities through purpose and mission, group identification, trust, and equity-based incentive plans.
