Burn Your Org Chart. Here’s What to Do Instead.

We’ve all been there — business is booming, everyone’s stretched thin, and your knee-jerk reaction is to hire more people.

It seems like a logical solution. More work equals more hands on deck.

But hiring someone to plug holes in your processes is often a Band-Aid fix that creates more problems than it solves. Instead of adding more people, we really need to reevaluate our organization (org) chart.

Sorry — Your Org Chart Isn’t Helping You

You can do more work with fewer people if they’re in the right roles, working at their highest and best use. This is one of the tenets of scalability, and it’s revolutionized how my clients do business.

When we look at traditional org charts, which resemble a family tree, we can’t tell what tasks people are actually doing. We only see who they report to and what department they’re in.

There’s a time and place for hierarchical org charts. They’re great to show to business outsiders like your banker, and employees like to refer to them to see where they fit in the reporting structure.

But these charts don’t help us run our business.

So, What’s the Real Problem?

When an owner approaches me and says, “I need to hire another salesperson,” or, “I need a new production manager,” I always reply, “What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?”

Almost always, the problem is some constraint, such as not having enough resources available. When we examine why, the cause is often what I call “The Hat Problem.”

Your business has too many people wearing too many hats and not enough people available when you need to get work done. It’s an availability problem, not necessarily a staffing problem.

So, before you post that job listing, make sure you’re using your current employees correctly. Ninety percent of the time, you need to change how you deploy people rather than add more.

Then, when you do hire, it’ll expand your team’s capabilities rather than slap a Band-Aid on a broken process.

A New Kind of Org Chart

Instead of a hierarchical tree, imagine your company as a set of overlapping spheres: Selling, Planning, and Administration, with Execution as a separate entity.

Slotting your team into those spheres gives you a much clearer understanding of process flow constraints. This reveals exactly where a new hire needs to go to have maximum impact.

When you get this right, you learn:

• Where people need to focus their time and attention
• Who’s being pulled across more than one sphere
• Where to add or relocate people to fix your processes

So, how do you do this? Let me walk you through it step-by-step.

Step 1: Draw Your Spheres

Create a triple Venn diagram with three overlapping circles representing Selling, Planning, and Administration. Add a separate box for Execution off to the side.

Step 2: Place Your Team

Start with yourself. Where do you spend most of your time? Are you primarily in one sphere or spread across multiple areas? Be honest — this is crucial for understanding where your energy is focused.

Next, look at your revenue generators — your salespeople. Put them in Selling, even if they wear other hats. Selling is always the top priority. If they’re a true hybrid, like a sales/production manager, put them in the space where Selling and Planning overlap.

Go through your whole payroll, slotting people based on their primary responsibilities. Your operations and warehouse managers likely go in Planning. Technicians go in Execution, even if they also work in the warehouse. Your bookkeeper goes in Admin, and so on.

If someone wears multiple hats, their name belongs in multiple spheres. We’ll solve that in a minute.

Step 3: Analyze and Optimize

As you plug names in, you start to see your staffing issues clearly. You identify where people are doing too many jobs instead of focusing on one. You also spot where some strategic outsourcing could unburden key people.

For example, if your top IT person is also working on events, that’s a problem. When they’re on a show site, they can’t support the office if there’s a tech issue. Bingo — there’s a clear opportunity to outsource some IT and make better use of a valuable employee.

The exciting part? Dedicating someone to a single sphere instead of spreading them across three or four dramatically increases that sphere’s capacity.

Step 4: Make Strategic Decisions

Let’s say you think you need another salesperson. When you do this organizational exercise, you'll likely find you have enough salespeople. They’re just doing other jobs that limit their selling time.

Here are other typical outcomes I see:

• Event staff gain more time to do events, boosting profits.
• Sales teams become more responsive, giving each prospect proper attention.
• The planning team can work further ahead, building a deeper freelance bench.
• Admin can manage outsourced suppliers and streamline business operations.

The spheres align with your processes. You want experts focused on each sphere, working at their highest and best use. That’s how you become more productive, efficient, and profitable without hiring a new full-time employee.

Work gets easier, and life gets more fun. That’s the hallmark of a truly successful business.

Your New Perspective on Team Structure

As your company grows, you’ll naturally reduce overlap between spheres. A 5-person company might have significant overlap, while a 50-person company will have more specialized roles.

The beauty of this system is its flexibility. It grows with you.

This exercise isn’t just about reorganizing. It’s about changing the way you view your entire organization. By aligning your team with these process-oriented spheres, you enable everyone to work at their highest and best use.

The result? Increased productivity, efficiency, and profitability.

So, before you rush to hire, take a step back and examine your existing structure. You might just find that the solution to your growing pains isn't more people — it’s smarter allocation of the talented team you already have.