One of the things that state government does really well is make org charts.  And if my department is indicative of the rest of the state, I would say that there are those in state government who have dedicated half of their careers to creating org charts.

A new official org chart came out the other day and like all of the previous official org charts, the staff looked over the org chart and tried to determine what was different from the old org chart.  Official org charts tend to be more of an exercise in Power Point than an actual useful document.  Just because the official org chart shows you reporting to someone, that doesn’t mean that you actually report to that person.

For example, on the official org chart, I report directly to the Director.  In reality, I report to one of the managers who reports to the Director.  And the manager, on occasion, assigns me to a subordinate.  In short, the official org chart does not represent reality.

So, you might ask, “Why not put out an org chart that represents reality?”  Well, we also have an org chart that represents reality.  It is called the unofficial org chart.  The official org chart is what we present to Civil Service.  The unofficial org chart is how we operate.

The main problem is with Civil Service.  Civil Service has their own rules and regulations for job classifications and organizational structures.  According to Civil Service, my job classification is at too high of a level to report to a manager.  Therefore, I  report to the Director.  However, the Director does not know what I do and doesn’t really want to know what I do.  So, on the official org chart I report to him and on the unofficial org chart I report to a manager.

On the official org chart, a subordinate may report to his manager.  On the unofficial org chart, the manager may report to his subordinate.  If all of this has you confused, try working here.

So what good are org charts?  I will tell you.  I few months back I read an article which claimed that you should never eat lunch on your office desk because it is full of germs.   Well, since I spend my lunch hour blogging, I need to eat lunch on my desk.  So, in order to combat germs, I have found that org charts make dandy placemats.  😉