📅 Thought for today:

‘Every company has two organizational structures: The formal one is written on the charts; the other is the everyday relationship of the men and women in the organization.’

— Harold S Geneen

#thoughtfortoday #organisation #orgchart #hierarchy #written #real #relationships

A CEO client consults on organisation charts.

During our discussion, I reflect on working with Railtrack in the early 2000s (I think). They had an org chart than included four levels of solo managers reporting up in a chain.

Management theory and team theory overlap here, a good manager can manage 6-8 people directly. An effective team will have 6-8 people.

Does that sound too small?

Well, if you have four layers of management, the theoretical maximum size of an organisation is about 5,700 people.

You don’t need a lot of layers, you need effective managers.

And most companies have very varied managerial competence.