Despair Inc.™: An Honest Org Chart

May 9, 2006, 12:42am PDT | Length: 00:02:30

What does the traditional organizational chart really tell us? Nada, says Dr. E.L. Kersten, author of “The Art of Demotivation.” Here he explains how a “salary-sensitive” chart can do more to show employees their true value. Learn more about his company’s demotivational products at Despair.com.

Transcript

Despair Inc.™: An Honest Org Chart

I'm Lawrence Kersten, the Co-Founder and COO of Despair, Inc. And today I'd like to talk to you about an honest org chart. Let's begin by looking at a typical org chart, and you'll notice that this is very standard. You begin, you've got the CEO on top, and then beneath the CEO you've probably got a senior vice president, and beneath the senior vice president you've obviously got a vice president. And below your vice presidents, you've got your directors.The problem with a traditional org chart is that it tends to misrepresent visually the importance of each person in the organization. So you'll notice if you look at this org chart the size of the director or the VP box is virtually the same size as the CEO box. So consequently, employees tend to misperceive their importance to the organization, because they see themselves as being very similar to the CEO or the senior vice presidents.At Despair, Inc. we have pioneered a new type of organizational chart. It's a salary-sensitive org chart. So let me show you what our org chart looks like at Despair, Inc. In some respects, it looks very similar to other organizational charts. But the difference is the power it has to communicate to our employees their relative importance to myself and the other executives in the organization.As with most organizational charts, we're beginning with the CEO on top. And once again, these are salary-sensitive, and so the size of the box is very different. As we go further down, we'll get to the SVP level, and then we get down to the vice president level and the director level. Now the important thing is, you'll notice here how small the vice president box is relative to the CEO box.The vice president is, while many people who have that title believe that they're very important, like they've got some kind of significant influence in the organization, at Despair, Inc. we let our people know that compared to the CEO, they are virtually irrelevant. And so this is why we have pioneered our salary-sensitive org chart. The purpose is to reinforce to our employees their relative importance to the rest of the organization.