The Importance of an Organization Chart

When I first started my business, someone told me to create an org chart, and I thought, “That is the goofiest thing. I’m just me, I’m a solo entrepreneur. I don’t need to create an org chart.” But I did it. And looking back from where we are now, it’s amazing to see that a lot of those things that we were looking for back then, have now been filled by some amazing people on our team.

I want to share with you my thoughts on org charts, and how they can help.

Thanks for tuning into the Scale Your Small Business Podcast with your host, Jillian Flodstrom. On this week’s episode, we’re discussing organization charts. Jillian is here to share some tips on why organization charts are important for your business, even if it’s just you by yourself or if you have a small team.

Every business requires a clear structure for their company, and an organization chart can really help with that. An organization chart can make your team understand the hierarchy of your organization and what channels to go through when they’re working on a project. A visual representation of the structure can help your employees understand their relationship with other groups within the company and how they can contribute over all.

By clearly communicating how each group of staff members relates to each other, the organization can experience greater growth by avoiding unnecessary conflicts and confusion. An organization chart can also help assess employees workloads. This can clearly illustrate where the loop ends, where the buck stops, based on every person that’s in your organization on your org chart.

Identifying opportunities for collaboration is a massive benefit of having an org chart. Which employees work in which departments, which might be good a resource for another employee, can be huge when determining where in an organization, especially if you have a large one, where people should go to find other people to collaborate with.

In the same way, an org chart can show you holes in the structure of your organization. It can point to bottlenecks where things are getting slowed down. Important functions that no one is accountable for are immediately apparent in an organizational chart.

Finally, it’s always fun (and surprisingly useful) to plan out the future of your business. You can visualize how you want to look after you’ve grown.

So, don’t discount an organization chart just because you might have a smaller business, you might be by yourself. Give yourself the ability to dream about what your organization could become and you never know, those future spots on the organization chart just might be filled with awesome people.