Talking or Singing Org Charts

What if Org Charts could Talk or even Sing?

If an Organizational Chart could speak it would enjoy a very limited vocabulary, like the character in Guardians of the Galaxy: Groot;

“I am Groot!” 

If organizational charts could talk they would sound like groot.
Groot, The talking Org Chart

Hello,

You searched for Organizational Chart or Org Chart. Why?

Were you really wondering what an organizational chart is? You can find 7 Templates over at Medium.  Here is an excellent link to smartdraw.com to see templates of 33 types of  organizational charts.

At www.Pingboard.com there is a great overview of what an organizational chart is, repeating almost exactly what wikipedia says about organizational charts.

Were you asking, how do I draw boxes to capture my organizational chart? There are tons of links to this exactly, over and over and over, Lucid Chart, Microsoft…

What were you really looking for?  In your mind were you humming a song to the tune of “War” by Edwin Starr?: 

🎼Org Charts, huh! What are they good for?…🎼

If you are wondering about the next line, “absolutely nothing!”, keep reading.

Often, when people search for organizational chart, what they are really wondering about is organizational structure and wikipedia does a great job of presenting the various types of organizational structures that have been popular over time. Hierarchal, Matrix, Holocrazys Circles, Traction’s Accountability Chart, Networks, Virtual.. the list goes on and on and they all lead back to the three things your Org Chart already captures really well.

Organization Chart with edge labels

Org charts tell us these three things about structure:

I. Who someone is. (Maybe what they look like, and contact info. etc.)

II. What is their Job.

III. Who they ReportTo.

Nerd talk: Lets breakdown Organizational Charts into computer thinking / data language:

Objects and Relationships:

Objects: There are two Org Chart Objects: A Person and A Job. 
Relationships: There are two Relationships: “Owns” and “ReportsTo”. 
I.e. A Person “Owns” a Job and a Job “Reports To” a Job. 

This is what an Organizational Chart Does. It lets us know who “Owns” what Job and who they “Report To”, that is it. 

What if Organizational Charts could Speak? They would use a very limited vocabulary to describe what was going on, kind of like the character in Guardians of the Galaxy, Groot, “I am Groot.”  Yes, this is cute, but it also highlights the reality of the shortcomings of an Org Chart.

Death of the Org Chart AuthorWalt Brown

The Future of Organizational Charts

What if we had a way to capture what is really going on inside our Organizational Structure, what if we could give it language and teach Org Charts to “speak” in paragraphs and sentences? 

What words and terms might we teach Groot? Let’s make a list of verbs and adverbs starting with our Organizational Chart’s limited vocabulary.   I Own Job, I Report To Job: “I am Groot”.

What if we could add verbs and adverbs like the ones here in italics? I’m Mentored By, My Functions are, I Attend this, I’m a Member of, I’m Accountable For, I’m Responsible For, I Follow this, I Maintain, I Participate in, I Interface with, I Interact with, My Objective is, My Result is, I am Coached By, I Have, It Requires…

What if we could  add more nouns that are part of our real organizational structure? Added to Groots People and Jobs, might be Roles, Positions, Meetings, Teams, Processes, Systems, Customers, Skills, Workflow, Entities, etc.

What if we could put these nouns and verbs-words together in an Organizational Chart that could Speak? It might sing like this: 

  • 🎼I am Person A, I own Job X, I report to Job Z that is owned by Person B. 
  • These are the Roles and Positions that are functions of my Job.
  • I am accountable for these Objectives and responsible for these daily Results. 
  • I am part of these Teams and attend these Meetings. 
  • I participate in this Workflow and follow and maintain these Processes, I login to and interface with these Systems, 
  • I am coached by this Position,I am mentored by this Job
  • I have these Skills that my Job and Positions require.🎼

Wow, sounds a lot like what an employee who really knows their job might sing, right?

If this talking Org Chart were real, a CEO could ask the Org Chart , “Org Chart Org Chart on my Screen, What is so-in-so really doing?” and the Org Chart would sing the above 7 line song.

If this were reality, an Employee / Contractor / Individual Contributor could ask the “Talking” Org Chart: “Org Chart, Org Chart on the Wall, What am I really doing?” and this magical Org Chart would sing a similar tune.

An Org Chart with the above vocabulary would seem to be alive, it could relate a deeper and fuller story to describe the modern day organization we are part of everyday.

What if this singing Org Chart could draw and diagram what it was singing, show you pictures to describe what it knows, open its library to show you how? 

Well, today there is an Org Chart that uses these nouns, verbs and adverbs to capture and visualize a modern organization in one place that can be referenced by all, it does not sing yet, but it can speak with nouns and verbs, and draw and share. 

It is called an Org Graph – the software solution is https://ograph.io

It is ready to perform for you right now.

Best, Walt

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