The Manager's Week · Chapter Two

Seventy-Four Names on One Rota

A span of control is a count of relationships, and past a certain size no leader can hold it.

Ammanuel Santa Anna · ORCID 0009-0008-3244-0306

Chapter Two of The Manager's Week: Where a Manager's Hours Go.

Abstract

A span of control is a count of relationships, and past a certain size no leader can hold it. It is a quarter past seven on a Wednesday, and the nurse manager of two surgical wards is standing at the desk between them with the week's rota in her hand. It is printed, because the screen version will not show both wards at once. There are seventy-four names on it. Each of them is, on the organisation chart, her direct report. She has a yellow highlighter, and she is marking the people she has not spoken to properly in a month, and she has stopped at nineteen because it was making her jaw ache. At half past seven the night charge nurse will hand over. At eight there is a bed meeting. Between nine and eleven there are two return-to-work interviews, a complaint from a family to answer and an incident review. The newly qualified nurse who started on Monday has been told she will meet her manager this week. It is Wednesday.

Cite this chapter

Santa Anna, A. (2026). Seventy-Four Names on One Rota. In The Manager's Week. Luminous Prosperity Inc. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23989106

@incollection{santaanna2026the2,
  author    = {Santa Anna, Ammanuel},
  title     = {Seventy-Four Names on One Rota},
  booktitle = {The Manager's Week},
  chapter   = {2},
  publisher = {Luminous Prosperity Inc.},
  year      = {2026},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23989106},
  url       = {https://business.hautelumiere.life/library/the-managers-week/02-seventy-four-names-on-one-rota/}
}

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Every chapter of The Manager's Week

  1. Chapter OneA Week Nobody Planneddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989104
  2. Chapter TwoSeventy-Four Names on One Rotadoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989106
  3. Chapter ThreeThe Translator's Thursdaydoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989108
  4. Chapter FourGiving the Work Backdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989110
  5. Chapter FiveWhat the Team Does Without Youdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989112
  6. Chapter SixThe First Ninety Daysdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989114
  7. Chapter SevenThe Field Manualdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989116

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The licence

Free to read, share, quote, translate and teach, non-commercially, for ever, under the Luminous Library Licence 1.0. Every other right is the Author’s. Deposited on Zenodo in the Luminous Prosperity community.