Am I the only one who loves looking at org charts at their job? (employees, analysis)

[branh0913]

Every since I was 16 as a bag boy for the grocery store, I've always wondered who was the "bosses boss". I often use to ask who the Store manager's boss was, and then people would say "The District Manager". Then I would ask "Who is the district manager boss" and they would respond "Why do you care, it's not important, you'll never meet him/her". I guess I've always been interested in exactly how what I do factor into the bigger picture of the company. I often look at my boss's boss direct reports and wonder how what my boss's peers do that differ greatly from from what he/she does. I even wonder about how different are other groups and units in the corp are, and if my work converge with their work in any significant way. For example a few years ago, I dated a girl who worked for the same company as I did, and I looked her up in my company's directory. She was in a totally different field, but I often wondered if she interacts with anyone from my management, or if anything I do impacts her job.

I guess I'm an odd ball for this, but I wonder if anyone else kind of have this habit.

[Hemlock140]

At my current and previous employers I was involved in organizational analysis so had/have a great familiarity with the organization charts, but in both cases there have only been about 2,000 employees. For really big worldwide companies there must be many pages of organization charts. It seems like it would be interesting to see what other locations have the same position as yours and how their organizational structure might be different.

[tnff]

You could be destined for management. It shows you are interested in the bigger picture and how things fit within the business. Too many people don't think beyond their immediate spot, today. No plan for how to improve or what should be done tomorrow, next week, next month. Had that discussion today in fact. Coworker was tasked with planning and kept going back to "why waste time planning, it will all change before then." Well of course it's going to change, but you at least need a direction to head instead of standing still as the competition leaves you behind. So many can't see that.

[branh0913]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

At my current and previous employers I was involved in organizational analysis so had/have a great familiarity with the organization charts, but in both cases there have only been about 2,000 employees. For really big worldwide companies there must be many pages of organization charts. It seems like it would be interesting to see what other locations have the same position as yours and how their organizational structure might be different.

Yeah for major corps, there are indeed many many charts. Sometimes if you work with an acquired company, the parent company's chart is not exposed to you. I have noticed a trend in corporate America of "consolidation" that seems to be huge. I first noticed this in 2011, when I worked for a company which was basically a "company of acquisitions". Each unit functioned indepdently of each other because for the most part the aquired company pretty much just existed as it did pre-acquisition. But I noticed that because culture was so different between orgs, and the cost it took to maintain so many system, processes, and even HRs (yes even HR was different between units), the company started to integrate everything. I noticed a lot of big megacorps are finding unique ways to combine their different business units.

[Serious Conversation]

At my last employer, I wish we had clear org charts. Outside of my own department and a few SVPs, I had no idea who reported to whom. We had no populated global address list or other tool to easily find this information.