Dotted line

The Human Resources military-industrial complex Go Premium The instrument (the “telescreen”, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. Index: Click ᐅ to expand: HR Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

It is a curious fact that the further up the multi-level marketing pyramid— sorry, I mean org chart — you go, and as the practical utility of line management dwindles to zero, so too increases your likelihood of having multiple line managers: usually one is designated the proper one, and the others simply “dotted” reporting lines, but organisations with a taste for the byzantine may introduce bimodal coverage matrices — say vertically, by division and horizontally, by region — meaning the same person can be reporting fully to two people at once, or even more if your management structure cannot be articulated in normal Euclidian geometry.

And of course there is the old investment-bank-as-the-cruel-jungle staple, the “co-heads” of a business, where lucky staff get to report to a two-headed credit-claiming, responsibility-ducking hydra, rather than a single individual.

In any case, having two managers is like running two diaries, or keeping two golden sources of the same data: a recipe for confusion, resentment, misunderstanding and, quand l’ordure se frappe le ventilateur, ritualistic sacrifice upon a ravenstone.

See also

• Line manager
• Org chart
• Reduction in force