Part of a whole

Organisation chart

Shows reporting relationships among people, positions or organisational units.

Diagram
Hierarchy
Responsibility

What it answers

Who reports to whom?

Shape: Boxes joined by reporting lines
What it shows: Reporting paths and spans of control.

Example

The question

Who reports to whom in the leadership team?

Leadership team reporting lines (organisation chart)

Boxes joined by reporting lines, top to bottom. The chief executive leads finance, operations and technology; the controller reports to finance, logistics and purchasing to operations, the data lead to technology. Names are fictional.

Illustrative data. It belongs to no company.

When to use it

Use it when

Reporting structures and accountability.

Avoid it when

Complex matrix relationships without labelled link types.

How to read it

Read from the top-level role through manager-child links.

Note

Separate solid and dotted reporting relationships.

The data you need

Layout: Parent-child table
Fields: NodeID: text; ManagerID: text/blank; Label: text
One row is: One person, role or organisational unit and its manager. What is the grain?
Rules: Use unique IDs and existing managers. Reject reporting cycles. Blank manager identifies a root.
Optional: Title,Department and a separate relationship table for dotted-line reporting.
Preparation: Validate unique node IDs, parent links, roots and absence of cycles. For size-encoded hierarchies, state whether totals are leaf-only or inclusive.
Units: Tree levels and branch position are structural. Size-encoded components use a named value unit; parent shares divide by the chosen parent total.

A parent-child table: each row names its parent, which together form the tree.

Worked example

CEO managesFIN and OPS. Both have the same immediate manager; the chart does not establish their relative seniority without extra information.

NodeID	ManagerID	Label
CEO		Chief executive
FIN	CEO	Finance lead
OPS	CEO	Operations lead

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