ThemeOperations & Process
CardCard 23 of 66
Questions5 to explore

Hierarchy

Decisions, formal power & structures

Knowing who actually makes decisions, and how, is one of the most useful things an organization can document.

Org charts describe reporting lines. They rarely describe how decisions actually get made: who has the authority to approve what, which things require consensus, where informal power sits, and who needs to be consulted even if they have no formal role in the decision.

In practice, the gap between the formal hierarchy and the informal one is where a lot of confusion and friction lives. New people get this wrong most often, but so do experienced people when the organization changes.

Documenting the hierarchy means capturing both layers: the formal structure and the informal reality. That includes decision rights, escalation paths, and the understanding of where things go when the formal process does not have an obvious answer.

What to capture

For this part of the company brain, what is worth writing down and keeping current. The goal is not a complete archive but a living record that new people can read and returning people can trust.

Org chart & reporting lines

A current org chart, even a simple one, showing who reports to whom and how teams relate to each other.

Decision rights

A clear description of who can approve what, at what level, and which decisions require sign-off from multiple people or a specific function.

Escalation paths

Where decisions go when they fall outside normal authority, including who to bring in and in what order.

Informal influence

Notes on who is consulted on major decisions even without formal authority, and why their input matters.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Who has the authority to approve decisions in each major area of the business, and is that written down anywhere?
Where do decisions most often stall, and is that because authority is unclear or because the process requires more people than it should?
How does the informal power structure differ from the org chart, and does everyone understand that difference?
When a decision falls outside normal lines of authority, where does it go and how is that escalation handled?
Has the decision-making structure changed in the past year, and do people know about those changes?

Things to notice

Formal org charts become outdated quickly; a chart that does not reflect a recent reorganization is often worse than no chart, because people trust it and act on wrong information.
Decision rights that are implicit rather than explicit create conflict; when two people each believe they own a decision, the conflict usually surfaces at the worst possible moment.
Documenting informal influence needs care; the goal is to help people navigate, not to codify a shadow hierarchy that undermines the people with formal responsibility.