I listened to a client’s story of doing a reorg for a department of a few hundred people.  It was painful to hear about the departments represented by pieces of paper, people represented by post-it notes, lists on spreadsheets to make sure nobody got left out, and meetings that lasted way into the night.  It is hard enough to go through the organizational design process of the changes needed for a reorg – you don’t want to have to fight the visualization and automation process too. read more »

Don’t confuse hierarchy with command and control. The mountain doesn’t control the prairie around it just because the river flows down the mountain and into the prairie. Come on, folks. People talk about org charts like they’re a bad thing. That is bunk.

People need structure. We naturally seek relationships, effective communication channels, and some sense of order.  Just because your company has a traditional org chart or hierarchy, doesn’t mean it’s managed with command and control, overlords barking orders, micro-managing and over ruling decisions.  Those are elements of a culture – not the product of a hierarchy. read more »

We have so many relationships in our work lives, both formal and informal. The org chart gives you a clear vision of the formal work relationships. You might chart people based on their financial reporting relationship or by their day-to-day functional reporting. Many companies do both. Some people scoff, saying that their company works in teams thus making the hierarchy obsolete. I have seldom found this to be a reality. read more »

Think for a minute about your company’s hierarchy. When you look at the very successful relationships of who reports to whom, you’ll likely find something that appears commonsense after you identify it – but not highly pondered when an organization builds its structure. Successful relationships between managers and their teams can be tied to the similarity in the timeline scope of their goals and objectives.

The question to ask is: what is the thought horizon, or goal horizon, for each manager and team member? In other words, if the boss’ objectives, goals, even compensation, are tied to events and plans that take a year to achieve, can they effectively relate and manage people whose objective is that their goals be met by the end of the day? For example, should the bank branch manager manage the teller whose primary measurement is a balanced till at closing time? read more »