Ditch Your Org Chart
Consider your nose. I'm sure it's a lovely nose.
During my photographer days, I learned that people have complicated relationships with their noses. And chins. But for now let’s stick with noses.
What does your nose do for you? It contributes to many functions that are critical to your overall health:
Respiration: Warm, humid, filtered air? Yes, please!
Immunity: Hair and mucus > random air particles and pathogens
Taste: Scent receptors > taste buds. Proven with math in the PS below.
Smell: The primary function your nose is responsible for.
Speech: Don’t believe me? Pinch your nose and try to say something profound.
Attractiveness: If I had to choose a different nose, I would pick yours.
Magic: Guests arriving and the house is a mess? Just wiggle your nose!
In case it’s not obvious, I’m trying to clarify the super important distinction between roles (nose) and functions (respiration, etc.). Roles are nouns; functions are verbs. A role is a position or title. A function is an action or process.
Because roles often communicate status, people tend to obsess over role clarity and completely miss the importance of function clarity. But for people who are interested in organizational health, functions are waaay more important to understand and map out than roles.
Step 1
Try mapping out the functions that must be performed successfully in order for your organization to achieve its mission. You might map things like program development, marketing, fundraising, hiring, training, financial management, etc.
Step 2
Once you have your function map, add the name of the one person who is responsible for the success of that function. If that goes well, add the one or two metrics that best captures the health of that function.
Before long, you'll have greater clarity about how your team fulfills its mission than any org chart could offer.
PS: Here’s the 100% accurate math and science behind my assertion that scent receptors could defeat taste buds in direct combat.
Some quick research indicates that an estimated 85% of what we perceive as "taste" is due to our sense of smell.
We have roughly 10x more taste buds than scent receptors.
Let's assume you have 4,000 taste buds and 400 scent receptors. If 85% of taste is from 400 scent receptors, then the remaining 15% is from 4,000 taste buds.
So the 400 scent receptors contribute 85% of taste, while the 4,000 taste buds contribute 15%.
That means each individual scent receptor contributes 0.2125% (85% / 400 receptors = 0.2125%). It also means that each individual taste bud contributes 0.00375% (15% / 4,000 taste buds = 0.00375%).
Therefore, each scent receptor is about 57 times more powerful than each taste bud (0.2125 / 0.00375 = 57).
