---
title: The people who aren't on the org chart | Nobu Sato
description: An org chart shows how a company wants information to flow, not how it flows. Reporting line vs influence line, and how to find the people who sway decisions.
image: https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/people-not-on-the-org-chart-en.png
---

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)

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# The people who aren't on the org chart

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)

![The people whoaren't on theorg chart](https://nobusato.jp/hs-fs/hubfs/people-not-on-the-org-chart-en.png?width=1200&height=630&name=people-not-on-the-org-chart-en.png)

When a client brings me an organizational diagnosis, the first document they hand over is almost always the org chart. A tree. Who reports to whom, at a glance.

I look at it. I don't start from it. An org chart shows how the company wants information to flow, not how it actually flows. The gap between those two pictures is what I'm looking for.

## What happens after the message goes out?

The CEO announces something at an all-hands, say a change to the commission plan. By the org chart, the message goes from him to the department heads to everyone, along clean lines.

What actually happens is different. The meeting ends and a few people gather around the same person to ask what he makes of it. If he says "this one's for real," people take it seriously. If he says "let's wait and see, they said that last time too," the plan gets discounted on the spot.

He isn't on the org chart, or at least not in that position. But how the message is understood is decided by him, not the CEO.

I saw a textbook case once. The person who actually shaped decisions in one team was a recent hire. No title, little seniority, but excellent communication habits. He listened to everyone, caught up with each person after meetings, and planted his ideas in their heads a little at a time. Within a few months he was setting the direction. What the team lead decided in the meeting was usually what this person had already settled in the corridor.

Every company has a few people like this. I call them the people who aren't on the org chart. When diagnosing a company, finding them matters far more than reading the chart.

## How far is the influence line from the reporting line?

In the innermost layer of my organizational diagnosis there's an item called the real power structure. It isn't a label like centralized or flat. It's a few concrete questions: who can decide, who can block, and how far the influence line sits from the reporting line.

The reporting line is what's drawn on the chart. The influence line is who people actually go to when something comes up. In very few companies do the two coincide.

CEOMgrMgrMgrReporting line (what the chart shows)Influence line (who people actually go to)

**Fig.1**Two lines: the reporting line is on paper, the influence line is who people really consult. The diagnosis measures the gap between them.

A gap isn't automatically bad. A newly arrived department head whose influence line still runs to the predecessor or a senior employee is normal; check in six months whether it has moved toward the reporting line. A gap that stays wide is a problem. That head has a box on the chart and a salary to match, but decisions route around him. Whether you replace him or keep him, you first need to know whose hands the influence line is in.

The hardest case is when the influence line belongs to someone with no formal role who doesn't want one. He doesn't decide anything, but his stance decides how others decide. You can't evaluate him and you can't move him, because on paper he is nothing.

## How do you find them?

I don't ask who the most influential person in the company is. That question gets the politically correct answer.

I walk decision chains. Pick three recent, specific decisions: one about revenue, one about resource allocation, one about people. Pin each to a date, the people involved and the outcome. Then work backward from those people. Who did you talk to first? Whose remark changed your mind? Once who knew, did things get easier or harder?

Revenue decisionWho did you ask first?KWhose remark changed your mind?·Who knew, and things moved?·Resource decisionWho did you ask first?·Whose remark changed your mind?KWho knew, and things moved?·People decisionWho did you ask first?KWhose remark changed your mind?·Who knew, and things moved?·K = same name, two or more times

**Fig.2**Walk three decision chains, pin each to one specific decision, and work backward from the people involved. The name that keeps appearing is the person who isn't on the org chart.

Walk three chains and the name that shows up twice or more is the one.

The order of interviews matters. Start with the top: the brief and the priorities as they see them. Then middle managers and the front line, about the same events. Then back to the top with the discrepancies laid out. Reverse the order and the middle will align their story first, and what you hear is a second org chart. It's the same approach as in [exit interviews](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/why-exit-surveys-lie?hsLang=en): ask about events, not opinions.

## Why does the org chart always miss them?

Because organizational design is classification. By product, by customer, by region. Every way of cutting puts some people inside boxes and pushes some things into the gaps between them. I wrote about this in [Your resume is a request to be put in a box](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/classification-is-destiny?hsLang=en), borrowing from Gillian Tett: Sony's two divisions shipped incompatible music players not because anyone was stupid, but because the boxes were drawn where they were.

The people who aren't on the org chart usually stand in those gaps. They know both sides, so both sides come to ask them. The position has no name, so the chart has no place for it.

Middle management is the other place people disappear. One of the derailment patterns in my diagnosis is good news only: information gets filtered in the middle. The person filtering isn't malicious. He just believes some things shouldn't go upstairs. And the top never learns what was cut from the message that reached them. Some of the people who aren't on the org chart are exactly this kind of filter.

## Once you know, what then?

You find these people in order to work with them, not to deal with them. Most of the time they're the lubricant that keeps the company running. Without them, the lines on the chart don't carry anything.

Three things you can do.

First, before an important message goes out, tell them first. Not to co-opt them, but to accept the fact: they're going to interpret the message anyway. Better they understand the why beforehand than you react afterward.

Second, before you consider replacing a department head, look at the influence line. If it was never in that person's hands, a replacement solves nothing. The influence line stays where it was.

Third, when you design the organization, leave a seat in the gap between boxes. Some companies formally appoint this person as a cross-functional coordinator. Others don't appoint, but recognize them in grade and pay. Either works. Not recognizing them is the worst option, because sooner or later they leave, and the knowledge of both sides leaves with them.

## When the company gets bigger

How much these people matter depends on size. In a fifty-person company, one or two of them set the tone. In a five-hundred-person company, every department has its own, and they fight each other. Three decision chains will surface only a few of them.

My method hasn't changed. Don't try to map all of them. For each decision you need to push through, find the one or two people who can sway that outcome, and get them to help you. A different decision, a different person. The org chart can't answer that question. Decision chains can.

In your company, the person everyone goes to first when something comes up: where are they on the org chart?

---

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