Too Many Org Charts

On not strangling your business with unnecessary hierarchy.

Every once in awhile a New Yorker cartoon lands that seems to capture the zeitgeist of a particular organizational trend, at least in my corner of the world.

This one was really one of those “ya either get it or you don’t” pieces, and I delightedly flung this particular .jpg to a few clients who I hoped would very much get it.¹

This little cohort of clients had indeed been doing a lot of org chart messing about; I of course play the role of the one-eyed pirate captain, though perhaps with a little less salt on top of my grumbling advice.

Too many organizational charts?

There’s something deeply soothing about seeing a chart of people and their titles, tidy lines of reporting indicating where everyone fits. Hierarchy feels clear: anyone can look at a chart and instantly know who’s responsible.

All businesses experience growth pains as they mature. Places where old processes and communication practices no longer seem to work. Moments when adding a team member or a new client seems to trigger a tsunami of chaos and confusion.

I often come across leaders attempting to fix these sorts of process and communication issues by tweaking the org chart. A new title here, a dash more hierarchy there.

We’re taught in much of work culture that titles are Very Important²! Large creative or advertising agencies are a great example, with their extremely detailed and structured job titling and hierarchy. These rigid types of titling communicate quite a lot internally about authority and skillsets, and in a 500 person business certainly do a lot of heavy lifting in facilitating how people work together.

It make sense, when things feel messy and like they’re falling through the cracks, that having a clear org chart would be just the right fix. If only everyone knew their role, these dropped balls would get picked up!

But in a tiny team— say, one with twenty, a dozen, or fewer people— there’s only so much org charting to be done, only so much hierarchy that can be encoded. Instead, too much hierarchy blocks people and work. Tiny teams tend to be comprised of multi-hat wearing generalists, the types of roles that leave avid org charters scratching their heads. Where does a person whose role includes working with clients, overseeing finance, and also hopping in on social media even fit in?

More importantly, excessive org charting often bypasses the actual work of defining process, decision making, and accountability; addressing performance or communication glitches; or clarity around who actually owns what.

What are org charts good for?

I’m not a hierarchy-hater. But I do believe that the working metaphor should be about site lines, not weilding power.

Site Line, noun : a line extending from an observer's eye to a viewed object or area (such as a stage). A theater with excellent sight lines.

Pirates are actually weirdly useful here.

Conjure your best pirate ship. Mine includes a crow’s nest with a pirate in a red bandana, and a higher deck with a huge steering wheel where the captain stands (yes, he has a mouthy parrot). Both of those people scan the horizon with their spyglasses, directing a change of course to head towards land, or telling the pirates below deck to get the cannons ready when a rival ship pops up on the horizon.

Leaders are the pirates and crow’s nest dwellers, who hold information and (ideally) experience that gives them the ability to see further out. Six months? A year?

There are also the folks below deck who will notice first when the hull springs a leak. The crew that tends to the daily maintenance of boat; the folks typically closer to the doing don’t have that longer term or higher up vantage point. Not because they’re deficient, less smart, skilled, etc… but because they’re focused closer to the ground.

Used well, a tiny org chart lays out site lines: the people who are responsible for looking out further ahead. Also areas of major responsibility, and yes, reporting relationships.

We need more treasure maps.

Org charts are not a substitute for decision making frameworks, for standard operating procedures, or for clear communication.

Which, to really beat this metaphor into the ground, brings us to Treasure Maps: treasure maps guide an adventure, invite a process, and require people figuring out how to work together. They’re a group of people standing around arguing over whether the compass is pointing North or whether the instruction to take ten steps forward means large hops or mincing steps.

Which is to say, it’s messier. It’s the three dimensial human sort of work that doesn’t map neatly to a two dimensial chart.

Two Tools to Try

(Instead of messing with your org chart one more time.)

1. Define accountabilities and decision making on a project or work area basis.

   Rather than using job titles to direct all work responsibilities, frameworks like DARCI can be really helpful aids (here’s one example of a DARCI grid) for particular areas of work or projects to clearly define decision making, doing, and anyone that needs to be consulting or looped in.

2. Who Owns the Question? From Charlie Gilkey’s Team Habits book: this framework defines responsibility around questions, while facilitating consensus and collaboration; teammates don’t need to know the answer or figure it alone, but they are charged with continuing to ask. For example, a teammate who is in charge of operations might own the question “do we have the right processes in place?” They’ll work with others to answer that question, but they’re the one charged with asking it in the first place.

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How we can help.

Here are a few reminders of how we (all of us at Wanderwell!) can help.

• BOOKKEEPING & ACCOUNTING SERVICES with a strategic backbone to provide you thoughtful, clear financials. We specialize in creative problem solving for growing companies led by non-finance-nerd founders.

• ADVISORY SERVICES to help you transform your business and your relationship to your business: navigating leadership and business growth, (re)designing your business model, structuring your people and systems, and projecting and calibrating your financial performance. I’ll also add: creating resilience in the face of massive uncertainty.

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If you’re interested in any of the above, I’m here to start a conversation.

1. By “get it” I mean, feel called out (in a humorous and loving way.)

2. Unless you happened to be raised amidst title-averse Quakers like myself.