Understanding the subtleties of an org chart

A company org chart gives you a great overview of all the executives and their business titles. Each title has been carefully chosen by the company. You can learn a lot by examining all the titles chosen by the company, and use that to identify the decision-makers that could affect you or your business!

PDF Org Chart Apple

1. Read all the business titles and check the reporting lines

  • Read each business title
  • Understand the focus of each executive and the objectives s/he may have.
  • Determine and infer how the executives (and their roles) relate to each other.

Benefit: Understanding which decision-makers really matter for you

HSBC - Subsidiaries -

2. Look at the mother company, the sister & daughter companies 

  • Understand the different roles
  • Look for differences and missing pieces
  • If there is no related company, look at a few companies in the same industry

Benefit: understand the business model and the go-to-market

Create an alert

3.  Set up daily, weekly or monthly alerts

  • Get an email when there are new hires, recent promotions or resignations.
  • Select “the entire group” to know about all the moves within the group
  • Before any calls, watch the history of all the moves in “My recent searches”

Benefit: Change means opportunities. You’ll be the first to know.

Special thanks to Paul for asking the questions!

About Thomas Lot

Thomas Lot is the CEO & Founder of The Official Board. In his own executive roles as head of Apple Europe's retail team and then VP of Amazon Europe, Thomas enjoyed the value of executive networking and recognized the need for clear company org. charts. Now, with the org charts of all the medium & large companies displayed on The Official Board, many more executives can benefit. Please [email protected].