Toss Your Org Chart

Org charts suck in a startup.  While they provide clarity around who makes decisions, they also communicate hierarchy and “I’m more important than you” during a time when most of us are wearing many hats and need to be accountable for deliverables across functions.  And if you have less than 40-50 employees, reporting relationships and “who does what” is pretty obvious to everyone on the team, so my negativity towards org charts are really for companies at or below this threshold.

At an early stage, reporting relationships are far less important than defining the handful (most definitely 5 or less) key objectives or focus areas for the company in 90-180 day increments.  Meaning, the only thing the majority of folks should be focused on is what will drive success over the next 3-6 months.  I’ve written in a previous post about the need to focus much longer term and determine strategy in order to determine what those key near-term objectives should be, but let’s assume you know them and need to get everyone focused on what to do, who’s accountable for what objective and which employees work on which objectives.  I’m a big advocate of creating a “one sheet” that lists on one side key activities and who’s responsible and metrics on the other side.

However, one of our founders came up with an awesome visualization that completely replaces the need for an org chart and provides instant clarity on 1) the key focus areas for the company, 2) who’s ultimately accountable for each area (the lead), 3) who the team members are that will work on each focus area and 4) team members that may have more than one focus area (to ensure their time is allocated properly).  This is our visual for BlackLocus with the names and key deliverables scrubbed a bit.  Everyone in the company is assigned to one of these 4 key focus areas. It’s no coincidence, however, that Jesus is accountable for Revenue!

I absolutely love this approach.  Could our priorities and who is leading and working on each priority be any clearer?  Those of you who know nothing about our company know instantly what our near term focus areas are.  Great work Rodrigo!