Every time I visit a company and they show me their organisation chart, the same image comes to my mind: a colleague of mine, years ago, in my corporate times. She was the Head of HR and she used to spend a whole day changing pictures and swapping names here and there approximately every three weeks (every time the General Manager wanted to make changes). A waste of time.<\/p>\n
When companies start to operate, they do not seem to be worried about having an organisation chart or not.<\/strong> They just focus on making things happen and making a profit. But there comes a day when they decide that they have to \u201cgrow up\u201d and, it could be internally or with the help of an external expert, they create a chart which is a copy-paste of a 20th century model.<\/strong> I am talking about the traditional, hierarchical organisation chart. The root of so many problems.<\/p>\n I am wondering why companies, when designing their chart, think about what they \u201chave to be\u201d more than about what they actually ARE.<\/strong> Why do they insist on fitting in a pre-designed mould instead of creating one of their own matching with what they are deep inside? Organisations (a part of our society as they are) are made of people. We are talking then about an organic environment<\/strong>, not about a clockwork masterpiece which remains impassive throughout the years. It is kind of na\u00eff to think that operational, tactical or strategic issues will we solved by means of a chart-like organisation chart made of names in boxes and straight reporting lines.<\/p>\n When I start a project in a new organisation and I think about who am I going to co-work with to make things happen, it is very useful to mingle with the company\u2019s organicsation chart<\/strong>, which is the company\u2019s human interactions map<\/strong>. It is very easy to see it in the common areas of the company: restaurant, corridors, vendors, tea rooms, etc. Any place where casual interaction flows, which has to be observed if you need a project to be executed efficiently and on time. Deep inside, people do not interact in chart-mode. People interact in circles.<\/strong> So maybe we should start to forget the 90s style chart-like designs and start to consider the holacracy-style teams suggested by Brian Robertson (organised in expertise circles). Because we do not live in a grid. So maybe we should not waste our time trying to frame a circle.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every time I visit a company and they show me their organisation chart, the same image comes to my mind: a colleague of mine, years ago, in my corporate times. She was the Head of HR and she used to spend a whole day changing pictures and swapping names here and there<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[709,617,712],"class_list":["post-23781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-brianrobertson-en","tag-holacracy-en","tag-organicgram"],"yoast_head":"\n