Template:M intro design org chart: Difference between revisions

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The org chart doesn’t say what should happen if Dan from risk needs to speak quickly to [[Janice Henderson|Janice]] in legal. The organogram says Dan must escalate up three [[Spans and layers|layers]] to the [[Chief risk officer|Chief Risk Officer]] who will then speak to the [[General counsel|General Counsel]], who will “cascade” his thoughts down to [[Janice Henderson|Janice]]. Of course, that is not how it works, ever: Dan just picks up the phone to Janice, or ''vice versa''. This is a [[desire line]], worn by decades of communal habit.
The org chart doesn’t say what should happen if Dan from risk needs to speak quickly to [[Janice Henderson|Janice]] in legal. The organogram says Dan must escalate up three [[Spans and layers|layers]] to the [[Chief risk officer|Chief Risk Officer]] who will then speak to the [[General counsel|General Counsel]], who will “cascade” his thoughts down to [[Janice Henderson|Janice]]. Of course, that is not how it works, ever: Dan just picks up the phone to Janice, or ''vice versa''. This is a [[desire line]], worn by decades of communal habit.


These desire lines are pervasive across the organisation. It is ''in'' these interactions that things happen: it is here that tensions manifest themselves, problems emerge and opportunities arise, and here that these things are resolved. It is the [[Dan Grades]] who keep the place running. They are the [[ad hoc]] mechanics who keep the the eighteen-wheeler on the road. They may not be especially “senior” — they don’t derive their significance from their ''formal status'', but from their ''in''formal ''function''. These “super-nodes” know histories, have networks, intuitively understand how the organisation really works, what you have to do and who you have to speak to to get things done.  
These desire lines are pervasive across the organisation. It is ''in'' these interactions that things happen: it is here that tensions manifest themselves, problems emerge and opportunities arise, and here that these things are resolved.  
 
The Dan Grades and [[Janice Henderson]]s are the ''[[ad hoc]]'' mechanics who keep the eighteen-wheeler on the road. They are the “super-nodes”: they know histories, have networks and understand intuitively how the organisation works, what you must do and to whom you must speak to get things done. They may not be especially “senior” — they are too busy to be senior — and they don’t derive their significance from their ''formal status'', but from their ''in''formal ''function''.  


A bottom-up map of functional interactions would disregard the artificial cascade of formal ''authority'' in favour of informal ''credibility''. It would reveal the organisation as a point-to-point multi-nodal network, far richer than the flimsy frame indicated by the org chart. With modern data analytics, it would not even be hard to do: Log the firm’s communication records for data to see where those communications go: who chats with whom? who calls whom? Who emails whom? What is the informal structure of the firm? Who are the major nodes?
A bottom-up map of functional interactions would disregard the artificial cascade of formal ''authority'' in favour of informal ''credibility''. It would reveal the organisation as a point-to-point multi-nodal network, far richer than the flimsy frame indicated by the org chart. With modern data analytics, it would not even be hard to do: Log the firm’s communication records for data to see where those communications go: who chats with whom? who calls whom? Who emails whom? What is the informal structure of the firm? Who are the major nodes?
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