The Organizational Chart Is Not the Organization

An org chart can show you reporting lines. It cannot show you where history, trust, and unwritten knowledge live.

Photo by Daniel Brady on Unsplash

Carrying the History

A few years after graduating from college, I took a job with a global health non-profit and stayed for sixteen years. My time there corresponded with a period of rapid growth in the organization’s size and scope. I was fortunate to join early, when there was still time to build relationships across the organization, and before our work became larger and more complex. 

Late in my tenure, I was often looked at as one of the “old timers.” While I didn’t love the designation, I did take pride in knowing and transmitting our history and values. And I always appreciated when a new senior leader scheduled time to talk with me. They recognized that formal seniority did not give them complete understanding. They needed perspectives from people who carried organizational memory and understood our history and unwritten ways of working. 

The View From Outside

I took that lesson with me when I moved abroad. The Dutch company I went to work for felt familiar. I had been their customer for more than a decade, knew most of their leadership, and understood the broad business model. But familiarity from the outside was not the same as understanding the organization from within. I had once been the person new leaders approached for context. In Amsterdam, I needed to recognize that I was now the person without it. 

The earlier parts of this series have focused on my individual experiences in transition: the loss of familiar competence, the need to be a learner again, the challenge of earning credibility, and the work of adapting communication. These were necessary points of growth and reflection. Eventually, though, I had to take a wider view and understand how I fit into the organization, and how it operated around me.

As I settled into my job - and made the mistakes I’ve described in an earlier post - I started to see how much organizational context I was lacking. 

What the Org Chart Couldn’t Show

I began spending time with one of the company’s longest-serving leaders. He was a pharmacist who led a highly technical quality-assurance function, and our roles rarely overlapped. But he possessed something that didn’t show up on an organizational chart: deep institutional memory and unusual moral credibility. Colleagues trusted his judgment, even when they disagreed with him, because they knew his decisions would reflect the organization’s mission and prioritize patient safety. 

Before advancing a new idea, I wanted to understand how he saw the issue. I looked to him for insight into what history I might be missing, what risks I had overlooked, and how my idea might affect parts of the organization I did not yet understand. 

Building a relationship with him gave me insight into the organization that no organogram could have provided. It reinforced what I learned when I was the “old timer” at my previous job: you can’t understand an organization solely from the position you occupy within it. You have to see it through the experiences of others.

Organizational knowledge is distributed. Different people carry pieces of its history, values, relationships, and informal norms. They can help you understand why a process exists, where stated policies differ from everyday practice, and what sources of strain or mistrust may be lurking beneath the surface. No single conversation will give you a complete picture, but developing relationships across the organization can help you see the system more clearly. 

Conversations Without an Agenda

As you take on a new role in any culture, consider how you can build the relationships that will help you understand the organization from the inside out. Networking can often feel transactional, so I’d encourage you to approach your colleagues with a sense of curiosity. You’re inviting people outside of your reporting line into conversations that don’t need an immediate outcome.

Consider asking:

What does this person see that your role may prevent you from seeing?

What do they wish people in your role better understood?

How might they describe the organization differently than you or your team would?

Remain alert to opportunities for reciprocity: share context and assistance as well as seeking it. You may be new to the company but you bring your own experience and perspective, and your fresh eyes may see something that others cannot. 

Whose perspective might help you understand your organization differently?