Ignoring your Organizational Chart
The organizational chart is a necessary evil. Vendors use them to determine out who has
real purchasing power. Customers use them to “let them speak to a supervisor.” New correspondents use them to figure out who’s the
right person to contact.
And yet, for all their use, many people believe they are an outmoded management structure. They describe organizational charts as a dry exercise in ego-stroking and authority-asserting. Although that sentiment may be overly strong, the reality is that our dependencies and
reporting structures aren’t linear. Uncompromising supervisory structures impede collaboration and innovation.
An organigraph is a more sophisticated way of showing relationships in your organization, but you shouldn't abandon the conventional organizational chart. Jean-Louis Zimmermann/flickr
For those feeling a little more edgy, the
organigraph and community models rule modern organizational structuring. By incorporating customers, vendors, project functions, and non-linear dependencies into the mix, they give a more accurate portrayal of the team- and results-oriented reality of a company.
So should you throw the organizational chart out the window? Of course not. A simple reporting outlay is a useful tool for people
outside of the company. Instead of abandoning it, automate it.
Manually updating the organizational chart every time someone joins or leaves the company is a waste of time, whether it’s done by HR or the relevant department.
The market has plenty of
software that can automate your organizational chart, so that you don’t have to fiddle with lines and boxes. Check out
OrgPlus,
Gliffy, or
Edraw. If you’re
using TribeHR, your managerial relationships are automatically mapped into an organizational chart for you, which you can keep online, or download as a pdf.
If you’re still wasting hours drawing an organizational chart with a pencil and paper, stop now! Computers are supposed to make our lives easier. Let them.
