Planning for change with organization charts

Abstract

What is a business organization? What should it be? After a tumultuous decade of rapid social change during which the business community was often regarded with hostility, society is demanding that the corporation examine its structure, evaluate its mission, and emphasize objectives compatible with both individual needs and organizational goals. How can a company respond to the challenge to scrutinize its operations and reevaluate its structure? How can a company change in a way that will benefit both the individual and the organization? In order to execute change effectively, a company must answer two fundamental questions: Where are we, and where do we want to go? Once present conditions are ascertained and a more ideal organizational structure agreed upon, the transition will be easier to complete harmoniously and without disruption. But such a transition cannot be effected without extensive and systematic planning, which involves using pro forma organization charts, a major tool in company planning. Traditionally, drawing up an organization chart has been viewed as a necessary chore, performed hurriedly to meet banking or other requirements. A chart is supposed to indicate how a corporation is structured, what positions exist, and what the hierarchy of authority and responsibility is. Yet organization charts can be far more than just procedural tools to obtain legal and financial recognition, or to satisfy the whims of a personnel department. They can be the backbone of an organization, the basis of change, and the statement of a corporation's future policy. This wiI1 not occur, however, if the charts are given only the standard occasional updating. To maximize the usefulness of organization charts as instruments of change and policy, two sets of at least three pro forma organization charts should be drawn. One set represents ideal corporate structures, constructed in terms of the expected technological, economic, social, and personnel conditions of the future. The other set represents optimum corporate structures, which reflect the problems of making the transition from one ideal chart to the next.