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May 27, 2025 13 mins

“You're never overworked; you're underorganized. The org chart should help you fix that.”

Tim Dyck and Katie Currens dive into the importance of intentional organizational charts. Tim explains how reactive decisions, like adding roles to solve immediate problems or merging jobs without reflection, can lead to burnout, confusion, and inefficiency. The episode explores how to design org charts around customer needs, include key voices from the front lines, and plan ahead with future-focused job descriptions. Whether you’re growing a team or restructuring after a departure, this conversation offers practical steps to build a healthier, more effective organization.

Read the blog for more from Tim Dyck on organizational charts. 

Notable Moments

[00:01:51] – Why most org charts are reactive instead of intentional

[00:03:07] – The power of building org charts around customer needs

[00:06:14] – Why front-line voices matter in org chart planning

[00:08:05] – The risk of combining roles without self-awareness

[00:10:36] – Why job descriptions should be based on the next 6–12 months

[00:12:05] – Steps to rebuild your org chart intentionally

[00:13:45] – How to develop job descriptions aligned with future needs

Connect with Tim and his team:

Website: https://bestculturesolutions.ca/

LinkedIn: Best Culture Solutions, Inc

Instagram: @best.culture.solutions  

Email: tim@bestculturesolutions.ca

 

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to the World at Work podcast where business leaders and job
seekers come together to create winning cultures and fulfilling careers.
I'm your host, Katie Kearns, and I am so happy to be back here with
Tim Dick, founder of Best Culture Solutions. Tim, good to
talk to you again. I was gonna say good morning, but nobody knows this morning.
So hi. Good afternoon, good evening, and good night. What was that for? That was

(00:24):
a gym oh, what was that movie? Oh, that was The Truman Show, maybe.
I'm gonna get that all wrong. We're gonna need a fact check episode.
Now I know I am having to Google it, and I will later for our
next episode. Excellent. Well, you know And it is from the
Truman Show. Never mind. I just got my hands. Victory. You had it. You got
it. Yeah. Oh, goodness. Okay. Well, back on Did you

(00:45):
on track here. So questions
today are stemming around a conversation with somebody
about organizational charts and new positions,
existing positions changing, and how
clouded it can very quickly become.
I know this is especially true. I've been in organizations that might

(01:07):
get a grant, and they can use that to
create a new role, and they like that role. So then it just kind of
transitions into a new position that ends up having
this little odd branch on the org chart, and
then all of a sudden it builds into a whole other team. But
it starts to shift job descriptions for some people who were hired under

(01:30):
a different pretense, and it starts to, unfortunately, make a
less than great organizational culture. So I
was really wanting to explore the idea of organizational
charts and what some wins are with them and
maybe what common challenges you see. Are you seeing
issues with org charts when you work with Oh, big time. Yeah.

(01:53):
Yeah. Here's the first thing that I see with them, like,
is that nobody ever does them deliberately. Right? So somebody starts a business, some starts
a company, they realize they need somebody else. They just add them and they say,
well, you should report to me or you fit in here or you fit in
there. But and and then they just add to organizational
charts piece by piece, you know, based on what

(02:13):
whatever fire needed to be put out today, you know. And
and that doesn't work. It it, you know, it means that you're letting your business
run you instead of you running your business. Now don't get me wrong.
There are times. Right? There are times where you, you know, you do need to
to do this, like, you just do. Things come up. You have to serve your
customers, and you can't, you know, you don't wanna

(02:36):
and we're gonna talk a minute about a little bit about how to do a
deliberate organizational chart,
design. Right? And you don't have it doesn't make sense, you know, every time a
new need from a customer comes up to sit there and completely
overhaul, revamp, from scratch your organizational
chart. Right? But you do it is smart,

(03:00):
to get it together, you know, as best as you can upfront,
and then every so often, completely rebuild it again. And
then between those times,
between those times, make sure that, you know, you are making additions,
like, when things come up for sure, but but that you're also taking time to
do it deliberately. But I see all the time, nobody ever does it deliberately

(03:23):
once, and you need to sit down and actually deliberately, you know, plan
out what your needs are, and then how can you structure your organization
to, to address those needs. You know? Our our
common mentor, Lee Lee Cockrell, will often say, like, you're never
overworked. You're underorganized. Right? And what a lot of people don't they apply
that to themselves personally, but organizationally, it's called an organizational chart for a

(03:46):
reason. It's called that so you can organize, right,
your people in a way that will be effective. And,
and a lot of companies get run off their feet, and they're doing way too
much. They're not but the problem is a lot of times that they might not
be overworked. They, as an organization, might be underorganized. So it pays

(04:06):
off to get it right and make sure that you're properly aligned as far as
what your company's needs are and where you've structured people to
address those needs. So when you're talking about
the people to address those needs, I'm I'm interested to hear your
thoughts on who all who all should be at that table when
reviewing the org chart. Because I feel like there there

(04:27):
needs to be multiple voices, but could it also get even more
cloudy if you bring too many people in? Yeah.
For sure. Well and first of all, let's let me just back up the truck
and define for people who might not know what an organizational chart is. Well, I'm
gonna guess most people do, but it's it's that chart that shows everybody that works
there, who they report to. It looks like a tree almost,

(04:49):
and organizes the company, right, or the or the organization as it were.
But who needs to be there? Well, you're right. You wanna have enough people there
with knowledge, but not so many people that it's
like it's it's not effective. Right? So, I mean, I recently did a review of
one for, like, a property maintenance
company. And, and,

(05:10):
basically, for them, you know, who we had in
there was was leadership, but we all said people that were on the front lines.
Right? And here's why. And I think now is a good time to get into
methodology. Right? Because the first thing you want to do is you
want to come up with a list of all the needs that your
company might have or your customers might have. Right?

(05:32):
What do your customers need? Let's find out a way to figure out volume. Sometimes
you're gonna do some some talking around, you know, how much volume can one
person handle, and then understand what the frontline needs are
and then you have to have a conversation about what you need internally or administratively
to support those needs. Do you need people that deal with bookkeeping or invoicing? Do
you need people that deal with HR? Do you need people that that help with

(05:54):
other administrative tasks or safety initiatives? And and you
just need to get really, really deliberate first about what the needs
of your customers are, and that's where you do need people that are on the
front lines and can tell you what they can and can't handle and what they're
hearing out there. You know, one that we just did, for
instance, we had somebody that was on the front lines and he hears every day.

(06:14):
I would love it if you guys could take this work on, but we don't
have enough people to do it. If we hadn't had that insider perspective from
him at the table, we wouldn't have known all that work was out there.
And we made the decision to grow the department by three people to service
that work, and now we can make more money. So, but so that's why
those perspectives are just so important. Right? What's really going on out there and

(06:36):
what it can really what it really takes to do the job. I love
that because I do know that, I've been in situations
where there's this idea of shifting a job
description. A job has maybe grown into something
more, or I've seen more commonly where there is
an employee that leaves an organization and instead of hiring

(06:58):
again, they just kind of transition that into another
role, shifting other job descriptions. And while
sometimes that works, in my experience there
have been challenges where work then gets assigned to
people that were part of a different role in the org chart, and that
might not be their zone of expertise. And so then it

(07:20):
kind of causes a little fracture in that org chart because you
no longer have that team expert. And, I mean,
how do you help guide organizations that do have
those, maybe new positions they're interested
in adding? Or when somebody leaves, how do they fill how
do you help them navigate whether or not to fill that role? Yeah.

(07:43):
Good question. Well and and and talking about combining roles,
like, I see that too often. Right? Somebody leaves, the easy thing to do is
just say, well, hey. Why don't you do that, right, as well? And
and, hey, there are times where you do need to do that. There are times
where your budgets change. There are times when, for many
reasons, where that does make sense, but you need to be highly self aware of

(08:04):
what you're about to do. Yeah. You know, because if the expectation is to have
a level of service on all of those items combined that you had before,
it's not gonna happen. Yeah. But that might be okay. You just
need to be self aware of that and expect that and have an open
conversation about that. Right? Because if you're combining two positions at
once, you're not creating more time for that person. So and that

(08:26):
and like I say, that could be fine, but a lot of organizations do that
without having any level of self awareness of what they're doing. They just say, well,
let's just do that, and then they get surprised when it doesn't stay
together the way it did. You know? So can you do that?
Yes. Should you do that? Sometimes. But you need to be entirely self
aware of what that means, what the trade offs are, if that makes sense. That

(08:48):
makes perfect sense. I oh, yeah, I'm
thinking of somebody right now. I feel like I need to send this episode to
as soon as soon as it goes live because that is a very real thing.
And the trade off to your customer experience, they
very much might feel it. And then there could becomes the whole layer
of the financial piece. If somebody was hired to do a

(09:10):
role and now you are essentially doubling that
workload, how are those people gonna
be compensated accordingly? Is it through maybe time
off? Is it through a pay incentive? Is it dispersing the
role among multiple? And, you know, do you work with companies
on looking at the, talent optimization piece

(09:33):
of that? You know, if you've got somebody that's done finance and worked
alongside somebody who's maybe done more of the scheduling,
but you wanna combine roles, it's really important to be aware what
strengths and challenges people might have with those
different pieces. Is that something you also help them with in that? That's right.
Yeah. And absolutely what we do. And I I think here's the thing. Right? So

(09:55):
if you have somebody to leave or position change and and you ask the question
about pay, and sometimes the reality is that,
pay might not even need to change if two jobs are being combined because it
might be similar level jobs with similar style of work, but you're actually making the
conscious decision to take some things from both jobs that you're combining and letting them
drop off. Right? It might be, hey, we're not gonna prioritize this anymore, and we'll

(10:16):
combine this other stuff. And that would mean I hate to say it. For people
that always want to think about how can I get paid more,
that might mean same pay, right, to be honest? And that's
okay so long as it's being done fairly and with with that
full, like, a full eyed picture, right, of of what's really
happening. But but yeah. Do we

(10:39):
help people do that? Absolutely. And sometimes too, the other thing is that when people
do leave, it is time to revamp job descriptions. And there's one thing that
I always see with when people need to revamp job descriptions that they
don't think about, is that they often just create a list of things
that people were doing, right, where the last person was doing. But
they do not ask themselves the question of how are things gonna change in the

(11:01):
next six to twelve months? How are things gonna change?
Right? And and, you know, am I gonna need something different out of this
role? Or maybe there's a, a project that needs to be addressed, or
maybe there's a, you know,
and that's gonna require a different job description for the same job or
different things in it, right, from what the last person was doing. And

(11:24):
so anytime we do a job description, we ask
what's happening in your company in the next six to twelve months.
Right? What is happening in your in your company in the next six to
twelve months, and how might that affect this role?
So that way we're not hiring somebody for yesterday. We're hiring somebody for
tomorrow, if that makes sense. Right? So

(11:47):
that is the big mistake I see for sure that that a lot of people
make. Well, I think that's a mistake that if
people are making, they probably need help with. So, Tim, what would be
a great way for people to reach out to you and your
team to have a little bit of guidance navigating that?
Absolutely. And thanks for asking. Just before I I get into that, what I would

(12:08):
say is that once every couple years,
what what companies should be doing is they should be taking a good
look at all the things that their customers need, Right? And get a good inventory
and then decide what are the positions that they need to support that. And then
they should design an organizational chart
around those positions. Right? Looking at how many, you know, how many people do you

(12:31):
need to do this at the front line. Then how do you keep yourself as
flat as possible while still being effective, right, with people that are gonna oversee and
manage. Now sometimes that that flat phrase,
makes people, want to do things like, say, well, we gotta be flat
and give them 20 people to all report to them at once. That's not effective.
Right? That's not as flat as possible, still being effective. Most people can

(12:52):
handle, you know, maybe five or six direct reports at most.
But, yeah, you you design what your customers need. You create the frontline
positions, to serve those needs, and then
you you put leadership roles in place in your org chart to,
to effectively manage or oversee or supervise or mentor those people.

(13:13):
But then from there, once you have those all in place, what you should do
is you should take each job on that org chart and create a job description
for it based on what you're gonna need going forward. And
it's a bit of an exercise. Or even if you have done one in the
last two years, but you feel like your company has an opportunity to
maybe grow a department or take on a new set
of business, right, that's gonna grow your company by several people, then sit down and

(13:37):
do this exercise for that business or for that extra stuff.
So that way it's deliberately designed, and then go through that exercise.
All that to say, we can help people for sure, and they can get a
hold of us pretty easily. My website is
www.bestculturesolutions.ca, and
my email address is Tim@bestculturesolutions.ca.

(14:00):
Perfect. And I love the way you mentioned that the
customer needs might have shifted. Feels very similar
to our conversation in the last episode about those seasonal shifts in the
industry and being aware of that and making those adjustments. So
long story short, nothing is going to be the same forever,
but then we need to stay on top of that, keep reviewing it, and

(14:22):
investing that time and looking at the org chart and
making meaningful, intentional adjustments is
going to just provide even more clarity to your team, to
your clients and customers, and really keep that,
organizational culture at its best. How about that? %.
Hundred %. Excellent. Well, thank you, Tim. I appreciate

(14:44):
it as always. Good to see you.
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