The unloved doc with all the answers

Photo by Jess Loiterton.

OK, for this to work, we need you to do a thing. We know, we know, this is usually a we-write-it, you-read-it kind of endeavour. But today we're doing something different.

Ready? Deep breath.

We need you to draw your org chart.

For those of you who are an org of one, this is gonna be easy. For those of you in an org of hundreds of thousands, this may also be easy. Just go find it on the company intranet.

And for everyone in an org between one and 100,000, well, you may have to get out an actual pencil and some actual paper.

Step one, draw some circles.
Step two, draw the rest of the chart.

Go ahead, we'll wait.

When org charts are outlawed, only outlaws have org charts

Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal wrote a (paywalled) piece about TikTok's internal culture. About 1,000 words in, this paragraph shows up:

TikTok doesn’t make an organization chart available to employees and bars them from creating and sharing their own. It’s a policy common among Chinese companies that want to deter competitors from poaching. Some ex-employees say they were told that a chart wasn’t necessary because TikTok has a flat structure where anyone can contact anybody.

The whole article outlines a set of cross-cultural struggles around labour practices. But the part about the org chart. That's the thing we keep coming back to. Bars them from creating their own.

As in, it is against company policy to know who reports to whom. You can lose your job for sketching the relationships between your colleagues. That's a hell of a thing to outlaw. As many TikTok employees note, you can figure out people's place in the organization by looking up their title and role on LinkedIn. The absence of an org chart may slow poaching down but it can't prevent it.

So why go through the trouble to ban a document no one loves in the first place?

An unlovable document

No one loves the org chart. Not the people who create them. Not the people who consume them. Not the Microsoft developers who built the original PowerPoint template to autogenerate them. It is an unlovable document. It is ugly. It is perpetually out of date. For many orgs, it doesn't print on a standard size piece of paper. And any conversation around it is dry as toast.

Until we made it about your freedom to do so, odds are you weren't surfing dropbox for the org chart. Yes, many HRIS tools have it somewhere in the settings. But our best guess is that Print Org Chart is used by a small number of employees and only a handful of times. Maybe for an upcoming board meeting. Sometimes to figure out the seating plan for an upcoming party.

The org chart is a power map. Not figuratively. Literally. It is a map of relationships, reporting structure, and accountability lines. When we talk about issues being structural, this is where that structure shows up. And if you know what you're looking for, you can spot problems that are inherent in that structure. Without knowing the names of any of the people involved. Or even the name of the company.

The hardest org chart to read is your own

Org charts will tell you all kinds of secrets. They'll tell you why it's hard to get things done. They'll tell you why some decisions take forever to get made. And why two other teams are working on projects nearly identical to yours. And why you feel like you're never going to get promoted.

But when you look at the layout of your own organization, you bring all of your asterisks. "Well, she's been here since the beginning." Or, "they're transitional in that role while we do an executive search." Or, "yeah, on paper, but two of his people really report over there." You have context for the circles on that chart, and it makes it harder to see the shape of things.

So, just for the moment, let's look at only the shape of things. Trace the structure. No names, no titles, no departments. Just dots and lines. The skeletal version, that could be about a totally different organization.

What do you see?

When we look at org charts, there are a few shapes we watch for. Patterns that predict frustration and tears. Patterns that you can do something about, once you know how to find them.

1. Dotted lines. Did you draw any? When you were drawing your org chart (or looking it up) did you add lines to more than one boss? Maybe some of them were dotted, or in a different colour. Or maybe you just brought along a mental asterisk. "Well, but obviously Alex also reports into Sam."

In most cases, a dotted line is a sign of a hard conversation that hasn't happened yet. There's a reality about who should be this person's manager. But for some reason, usually having to do with not hurting feelings, we've chosen to leave it ambiguous.

Without names on the chart, it's easier to see that we've set this person up to fail. Instead of hurt feelings, they have two bosses. Bosses who won't always agree. Bosses who will each do a partial, diluted version of management. With their person left to figure out, as they read through their inbox each morning, which boss they need to show up for today.

2. String of pearls. Do you have any dots on your chart who manage one person? And then that person manages one person? Line-and-dot, line-and dot. That's a string of pearls. And with names on it you might say, "Well, he wanted management opportunity but we don't really need him to have a team yet, so we gave him one person."

Just looking at the shape of things, you can see that this person at the bottom of the chain is isolated. Without any direct peers, a huge amount of their communication and collaboration will have to flow through their boss. What's worse, we often do this to very junior employees who benefit immensely from having peer colleagues to work with and learn from. It's a recipe for a stunted junior employee, and a frustrated manager-in-training.

3. Clusters. Do you have any dots with more than 8 lines coming off them? More than 10? Is it your CEO? Is it you? Congratulations, you've now spotted one of the biggest risks to your organization. And welcome, we've both been there and it's rough.

When you're a recognized leader in a growing org, this happens. New functions get put under you because it feels like a safe place for them. Or you're asked to take over teams when some other executive leaves. It feels good to be trusted like that. It's nice to be in the middle of things, and to have enough authority to make sure things go well.

But it deadlocks your organization. Without effective delegation, everything has to wait for the person in the center of the knot. Every decision that needs approval. Every conflict that needs arbitration. Every time two parts of your org have different understandings about what comes next, they enter into a multi-way negotiation for time and attention. And while that negotiation is going on, everything stalls.

We know we asked you to take all the names off of the chart, but is any of this starting to sound familiar?

Untangling the org chart

There's a cheat code to the whole thing. The dots, the pearls, the clusters. There's a way out. If you're the boss at any of these points in the org chart, maybe you've got a good reason for why the org chart doesn't make any damn sense. It's temporary. We're growing. We keep meaning to fix it. But all of those give you permission to kick it down the field and figure it out later.

The fix is simple. Someone has to go first.

Our dotted-liners are waiting for one of their bosses to say: "This person has two bosses, which doesn't make sense. They should report to you. If we need to make a change in the future, we can do that, and we'll all still work together and collaborate closely. But only one of us should own the management relationship going forward."

Our string-of-pearls folks need either their own boss or their boss' boss to say: "Let's leave the reporting structure intact until we're ready to have a small team working on this part of the business. It might be a while in the making. While we're waiting, mentorship and sharing best practices are important for this person. And a great way for a future boss to develop core skills for when the opportunity to manage does arrive."

And our octopus-clusters need someone to say: "I volunteer as tribute. I can report to someone else. I am a bright star and I will shine in a variety of contexts. Even though I enjoy reporting to the CEO, this isn't sustainable as a reporting structure. But I still want to grab lunch once a quarter, ok?"

Now, flip back to the version with the names and titles. Armed with your newfound decoder ring. You can see the bumps and lumps. The confusion. The friction. And the way out. Off you go.

- Melissa and Johnathan