Episode 247: Who else is involved?
An organizational chart is not created to look at who's at the top, but to understand where you are going as a company. In today’s episode, Fiona talks about the importance of having an organizational chart. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Orgnizational chart
Conclusion
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Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Welcome to episode 247 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today, it is a quick tip episode, and those come out every single Tuesday morning Australian time usually 10 minutes or less, giving you a tip tool or tactic that you can implement immediately in your business. Today it is a good one. It is one that I think opens up people's eyes when I ask them to do it when they're a client. I've seen some huge changes happen to people's businesses as a result of this very simple tactic, it's an activity that you can do. So before we get stuck into that, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the beautiful land on which I work and live and get to record these podcasts, and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
A lot of the people that I work with did not come from a corporate background. I mean, definitely, there are people that I work with who have had a corporate career prior to starting their business, but a lot of people do not. A lot of people may have worked in different types of jobs and then started their business, or maybe they just knew what they wanted to do straight away and have always been in a type of creative business. When I ask them to do this exercise, it's not always something that they have seen. Now in a corporate, it is usually something that is shared with most staff. I would imagine it's always been the way that I've had in different corporate jobs that I've had when they are onboarding. When they are newly employed with a company, they are given this thing, which when I've gone through it with other people, they've said, “I've never seen anything like this before.”
What am I talking about? I'm talking about an organizational chart. Now before you switch off, because you're like, “Oh my God, so boring. Why would that be important to me?” It is super important, even if you're the only person that is working in your business. If you're like, “No, I don't want to have a whole bunch of staff.” If you're like me, I don't want to have a huge amount of staff. People have said to me so many times throughout the years, you should teach people to do what you do and then you could make a whole bunch of money on top of them. I don't want to do that because I like to have a handful of staff. I have managed big teams before and I've really enjoyed it and I think I've been a pretty “Okay manager” saying that because a lot of the people I've managed are still friends and everything else and get in touch.
I enjoy it. But I don't want to have a team of 10 people that I manage. Totally fine for other people and I help people with that all the time. But even if you work for yourself and by yourself, you'll have other people around you. You may have an accountant, you might have a bookkeeper, you might have a freelance graphic designer or a copywriter or a web developer, or other people that help you in your business. You might outsource things to a third-party logistics provider or other groups and companies that are part of it. What is an org chart? Well, it's a chart, a diagram showing a visual representation of the company. Now, an example that I often share with my clients was in my last employed role, I was head of marketing.
I looked after three teams essentially, and the managers of each of those teams reported to me. However, their direct reports could also talk to me about all sorts of things. I had to understand who was on their team and prior to becoming head of marketing, I had managed one of those teams. The teams were the eCommerce digital team. Then we had the content creation team, and then we had the PR team. Each of those had people within them. There are probably up to about 20 people that were on this org chat just for the department of marketing. We also had a dotted line to this group team that was CRM. The customer relationship management team and also the customer call center team. There were a bunch of people, and an organizational chart is often showing the structure of those tapes.
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Now it is not purely to be put there to be like, look at the hierarchy and look who's on the top, but to show this person reports to this person or this person needs to have a dotted line to this person, or these people need to be informed about these types of decisions. What I ask clients to do is to think about what your organizational chart looks like now and what would you like it to look like in the next three years. 36 months from now, what does that plan look like? For some people, it's exactly the same, but they might actually be scaling and getting a lot more support from say, agencies or from an ad specialist or somebody else that is helping them. Or maybe they have an agent, maybe they're going to outsource their manufacturing or maybe they are launching into new territory like the US or the UK or wherever it is.
They have a team over there, like a satellite team. What you want to think about is where am I going. Again, this is something that so often we are in the detail that we forget to think about what's the bigger picture here. What am I trying to do? In my own org chart at the moment, I have my incredible OBM online business manager, Yricka, who I could not run this business without. She is just amazing, both on a professional level and also on a personal level. She is like the hype woman that everybody needs at all times. She's just amazing. I can't believe she is just turned 30. She's so mature and incredible. Yricka works with me and we have Scott who is the editor for this podcast, he and I have never met, we've been on a Zoom call I think once or twice, whereas Yricka and I have a Zoom call most weeks.
We are also in contact every single day. Then I have graphic designers. We have recently rebranded. It's not launched yet, it's exciting. But we did rebrand originally like seven months ago with somebody. I was not incredibly happy with the end result, but it just didn't feel like it completely fit. It was a great design, but I just felt like something was missing. I recently worked with Ashley Simonetto from New Opening Studio, who is amazing. She did such a good job and is excited to launch that. But if we need more graphic design work done, I will be reaching out to her again. Then there are people that will help with the website. We have a guy that sometimes helps with Squarespace and all sorts of people. Then I have my amazing accountants, shout out to Estella Tang and MJA.
They are incredible. Then you've got legal, then you've got all these other people. Even if it's essentially myself and Yricka working in the business, there are other people around that we need to report to work with. We have a great team as well that works on the transcript of this podcast. There's a whole bunch of people, I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody as well. What does the business look like now? Where am I taking it? There are definitely plans that we have in this company to do some exciting things in the next three years. I will have to either hire or outsource that. That kind of has to be in the plan. The org chat. Similarly, I know a lot of my clients are getting bigger overseas.
They're looking at, do I need to employ somebody in that particular country or do I need a third-party logistics team in that country, or do I need an ad specialist or a Facebook agency or whatever it is in that country? They're looking at all sorts of things. How do you start with an org chart? The easiest place is to consider the four or five elements of your business. And every business has this, even if it's just a solo person. You have finance, so you're an accountant, your bookkeeper, and anyone else that you might have a financial planner. You've got finance, you've got marketing, you've got operations and product, and you can sort them out whichever way you want. You can have operations first and product, whatever. You're looking at each section, who do I need?
Depending on how big you are, have an HR people management area. If you're not that big, that might sit under operations. You can literally sit down and think, finance, marketing, operations, product, what do I need under each and what do I need now? And then the big thing is where am I going in three years? If I was to create this organizational chat 36 months from now, what would it look like? Who would be involved? Where am I scaling? What are the kinds of people or help that I need? Maybe you don't necessarily have the money for now, or maybe you don't have the product for right now, but you are hoping to get there in the next three years. Because just doing that simple exercise will really help you hone in on what am I trying to build with this business.
Even if you've been in business for 20 years, still think about where are we going in the next three years. Maybe you're going to sell it, Maybe you've got a great exit strategy in mind. Maybe you would like to get a general manager, Maybe you would like to license part of it. There are all sorts of things you can do in business. That's why it's so amazing and you've got so much freedom. But it's about sitting down and nutting out, what does my org chart look like now and what will it look like in three years? That is it. If you want to find an example of an org chart, you can literally Google organizational chart. If you use PowerPoint, you can, or Canva, you can literally put it in there and it'll show you examples and you just move people around.
Their point again is not to create a hierarchical system and like look at who's at the top, but to understand where are we going. Also that you don't have a bunch of middle management and not actually people doing the work, or likewise that you have too many people, the doers, and not enough people managing those people so that then essentially you become a people manager rather than whatever your job is supposed to be. That is it for today's quick tip episode. It's gone slightly over the 10-minute mark. Sorry, Scott. You can find the show notes for this over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/247 and we'll have links to all those amazing people that I get to work with every day. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this useful, please hit subscribe so you don't miss out on any other future tip episodes where hopefully I'll speak a little more clearly than I am right now. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach.
