Organizational charts

Every time a new organizational chart arrives to your e-mail, you take your time to read, understand the political moves, the roles identified on it and the evolution of the people within that organization. For me this is the main use of this communication tool, the rest is secondary.

Well, secondary? from the political savvy yes, but from other aspects it’s important. I started to work on an account without a clear organizational chart. The result?

• Team leads have a vague idea about where their teams are working within the account.
• Sales do not understand the team organization and when they want to build a solution they are proposing delivery models that do not fit with the reality.
• HR is not able to understand the role of the people with respect the rest of the team.
• Account manager knows the weaknesses of her team, but is unable to transmit these weaknesses with respect the whole thing.
• Everyone builds their own idea of the organization, and they learn day by day new parts of the team, the learning curve is slow.
• People which relevant skills do not know each other, the other day one guy told me: I’m looking for a freelance Tibco architect; why? there is one in our team based in UK!!
• Only some people know the whole picture, and they are tired of explaining it.

Now that I am doing a Six Sigma training, the only thing I see is waste, so much waste of time on communication.

Hey guys, why you do not do a simple organizational chart?

(Estatua del Cid en Sevilla, tapizada con un colorido croché)