Imagine a bee colony, which can consist of up to 80,000 bees. Organizational structure, then, is a visual diagram of an organization that describes what individuals do, whom they report to, and how decisions are made.

A brief history of organizational structureĪn organization can be defined as an entity comprising multiple people working towards a common goal, linked to an external environment. Adopting the right structure not only reflects and reifies a company’s values, it can make or break its success. Knowledge work in the 21st century has become far more fluid and interdependent, and its proliferation over the last two decades may require new organizational structures. The chances are even greater that your parents did, and greater yet that their parents did.īut as society, technology, and culture have evolved, so too have the possibilities-and requirements-for how to structure a company. Sound familiar? Chances are you’ve worked at a company with that exact structure in place. You know the kind-the all-powerful founder, CEO or managing director builds a team around themselves that team hires managers to lead various lines of business and those managers hire individual contributors to carry out everyday tasks. Structure also helps create culture, and when the culture is such that people love being together in the workplace, incredible things happen.”Īs big business boomed in the 20th century and corporate best-practices began to congeal, a type of organizational structure emerged that we’ve all become accustomed to throughout our careers-the traditional hierarchal model. “When a company implements the right structure, key goals and key results ensue. “Structure is actually one of the most important components of a company,” Louis Carter, founder and CEO of the Best Practice Institute and author of In Great Company: How to Spark Peak Performance By Creating an Emotionally Connected Workplace, tells Dropbox.

In fact, organizational structure can help dictate culture, values, and success. Structure doesn’t only allow an organization to run smoothly it also helps prescribe how an organization runs.

Whether you work for a tech startup, a small business or a giant multinational, organizational structure is so foundational we often take it for granted.

Small company org chart