Org charts that stay useful for more than a week

An org chart is the first thing a new starter asks for and one of the least reliable documents in most companies. The drawing is easy; keeping it true is the hard part, and a few choices at the start make a large difference.

Get the layout right

Everyone at the same depth sits on the same line. This is the single biggest readability win. If three people report to the same manager, their boxes should be at identical heights. Select them and use Align middles, then Spread across.

Keep a consistent box size. Varying sizes suggest varying importance, whether you meant that or not. Pick one size for managers and one for everyone else, and stick to it.

Let it go wide, not deep. Org charts read badly past four levels on a page. For a bigger organisation, draw one chart per division with a shared top box, rather than one enormous chart nobody opens.

What goes in a box

Role on the first line, name on the second. Role first, because the role is what the reader is looking for and it changes less often than the person.

Resist adding email addresses, phone numbers and start dates. Every extra field is another thing that goes out of date, and the chart is for structure, not for contact details. A directory does contact details better.

Show the things people leave out

Vacancies. An empty box marked “Vacant — recruiting” is far more useful than a gap. It shows the shape the team is meant to be, which is usually the thing being discussed.

Dotted-line reporting. Use a dashed connector for a secondary or matrix relationship, so it cannot be mistaken for a direct report. If half your organisation has dotted lines, that is worth noticing.

Contractors and agencies. If someone in the structure is not an employee, mark it. It changes who can ask them to do what.

Shared roles. Two people genuinely job-sharing go in one box with both names. Two people doing similar work in different teams get two boxes.

Why they go stale

Because the chart lives in a slide deck that somebody made for one meeting, and nobody knows where the editable version is.

Three things help:

Put a date on it. A month in the corner. A chart with no date gets trusted long after it stopped being true, and a visibly old chart at least prompts someone to ask.

Keep the source file. Export the editable file, not just the PNG, and keep it somewhere the next person will find it. A picture of an org chart is a dead end.

Give it an owner. Usually whoever runs onboarding, because they are the person who notices when it is wrong.

Colour with purpose

Colour by department, and use it consistently. Six colours is about the limit before it stops helping.

What colour should not encode: seniority, which the layout already shows, or how you feel about a team.

Check your colours are distinguishable for a colour-blind reader, and never use colour as the only way to tell two things apart. Put the department name in the box as well as colouring it.

A note on what a chart does not say

An org chart shows reporting lines. It does not show who actually makes decisions, who people go to for help, or how work really flows. Those are different diagrams, and in many organisations they look nothing like the chart.

If the question is “who do I ask about X”, an org chart is the wrong document. If the question is “who is accountable for X”, it is exactly the right one.