Over the years, and across all manner of organizations, the debate has raged—well, maybe not raged, but it’s certainly been discussed now and then—should we have an org (organization) chart, what should be in it, what if it falls into the wrong hands—<gasp> competitors or headhunters who will stop at nothing to steal our talent?

The outcome of these discussions ranged from predictable to bizarre.

One obvious and well used approach—as long as the company didn’t grow beyond 10 or 15 people—was not to have one. Since everybody inside the company knew what each other did, more or less, the lack of an org chart didn’t create a problem—although the “more or less” did create some memorable moments—and did work extremely well guaranteeing the information’s unavailability to the world at large.

However, once over 15 employees “none” wasn’t very viable. Companies had to do something to keep track of who they hired and give others at least some idea what they were doing, although paranoia levels were still high. The pre-computer answer was obvious and the master org chart was created, copied, and given to each department. Analog hard-copy memos containing informational changes were forwarded to the department manager and the manager was expected to arrange for the updating of the chart. This approach pretty much guaranteed that no single copy of the org chart would actually be accurate—in case “they” managed to get hold of it—so employees found themselves making an extra two or three phone calls to connect with the person they were trying to reach. Not exactly a productivity tool!

With the advent of the personal computer, and programs that easily created and updated organizational charts, companies were forced to be more creative in their efforts to forestall “them” from getting the information. Again, both of the following ended up being more anti-productivity, anti-innovation tools than talent protectors.

The first and one of the most popular solutions was to spread the required information over multiple documents, usually three of them (depending on the creator’s Machiavellian proclivities).

• An accurate org chart that included each employee’s name and position,
• a separate internal phone directory with all employees alphabetically, their extension number and a code number, and
• a list of departments and their code number.

The system worked like this: Let’s say you wanted to reach a test engineer. You would look at the org chart and find out that Jim Reynolds was shown in that position. You’d look Jim up in the directory, only to find that there were three Jim Reynolds listed. So you would look up the department code for test engineering (as opposed to manufacturing test) and compare it to the three Jim Reynolds listed and, assuming one of the codes matched, your call to Jim would yield one of the following response…

• “Sorry, no Jim Reynolds at this extension.”
• “I don’t work in test engineering any more and don’t know who took my place.”
• “Hi, this is Jim Reynolds. I’ll be on vacation starting August 10^th, and back in the office Aug. 25. If you need to speak to someone before that, please call my supervisor, Joe Anderson. Thanks, and have a great day!”
• “Hi, this is Jim…”

The second, more recent approach (to mislead outsiders) was to obfuscate titles through the use of internal company jargon or vagueness—taxonomy manager (AKA corporate librarian) and overview developer (AKA software architect)—a sure way to stymie the bad guys—as well as most of the good ones.

Three things have happened to start changing this.

1. There is a much sharper focus on innovation, teams and productivity improvement. Not just in the acquisition of new systems, but on actually improving processes and eliminating obvious time-wasters (see above).
2. The rise of the Internet and email are driving a much deeper attitudinal change in management thinking. Smart companies have realized that the only protection they have against having talent stolen is to create a company that people won’t leave.
3. More and more companies are reaching the conclusion that org charts are actually a form of communications between employees, vendors, clients and even Board members. This means that they have to be clear, concise, and accurate.

So, what should your org chart actually do? It should graphically show

• who is responsible for the various functions within the company;
• who should be contacted for information in a particular area; and
• how the different positions relate to each other and to the outside world.

No matter the size of the company, clear communications are absolutely critical in today’s business world. Job titles need to have an easily understandable relationship to the duties of the person involved—not inflated, overly generic, slang or buzz-word dependent, or in any way confuse or otherwise hamper the company’s ability to do business.

Historically, companies’ reluctance to publish simple, accurate, current org charts has been anchored in a fear that “they”—whether headhunters or competitors—would steal their best and brightest. But when corporate (or managerial) paranoia leads to withholding information making the job more difficult, there’s no need to worry about people being recruited because they’ll be out actively looking!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 8th, 2006 at 6:38 pm and is filed under Business info, Communication, Culture, Motivation, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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