Here’s what one organization of five-thousand people, working across eight countries, discovered when it mapped its formal hierarchy, Step 1
Shorter communication paths. By identifying managers at all levels, CEO was able to reach entire organization quickly. Two-link communication strategy proved much faster than the typical cascade from level to level, which took as many as eight links, a lot of time, and often resulted in garbled messages
Highly-connected managers. By knowing the span of each manager, they identified a much smaller group who, in essence, spoke to much of the organization on a regular basis. These people became channels for targeted internal communications
Managers with the largest organizations. Buried deep in the hierarchy, more than three links from top, these people were not part of existing leadership development programs. Once identified, this omission was rectified
Managers missing from leadership forums. Again, because of their placement deep in the organization, people with unusually large leadership responsibilities were not immediately visible and thus not included in extended leadership groups. Likewise, once recognized, they were included
The truly virtual teams. By comparing locations of members, they could distinguish management teams who needed support in distributed operations from those who worked principally face-to-face
The people at risk. By comparing measures of organization size, span, and physical distribution, they were able to spotlight positions where people’s loads were unusually great. Responsibilities were reconsidered and reassigned as necessary
So there’s more to even the simple org chart than meets the typically myopic eye
Think about this the next time you pull out your org chart or see a piece of it displayed in your online directory
In an open, transparent, organization, the act of mapping relationships itself stimulates productive and informed self-organization
As people make their local shared work more visible, they begin new conversations about how to do things better within the frame of a shared mental model of the whole
Self-organization is how large networks naturally generate and manage the “requisite variety” needed to survive and thrive an environment of rapidly increasing complexity
