Organizational charts are built around reporting lines.
They show who reports to whom, how responsibilities are distributed and how leadership teams are connected across a company and its subsidiaries.
A list of executives tells you who works at a company.
An organizational chart helps you understand how the company operates.
Whether you work in sales, recruiting, consulting, investing or corporate strategy, understanding an organizational chart helps you identify decision-makers, understand executive responsibilities and navigate complex organizations more effectively.
Below are the main concepts used throughout The Official Board.
1. Reporting Lines
Reporting lines show who an executive reports to and who reports directly to them.
They explain how responsibilities, information and decisions move through an organization.
Why reporting lines matter
Reporting lines help you understand:
• who manages each executive
• who reports directly to them
• where responsibilities are located
• how information moves through the company
• where decisions are likely to be reviewed or approved
Two executives may have similar titles but very different responsibilities.
A Chief Financial Officer supervising Investor Relations, Accounting and Treasury has a different scope from a Chief Financial Officer who also supervises Procurement, Information Technology and Human Resources.
The Job Title describes the executive's role.
The direct reports reveal its actual scope.
2. Reporting Levels
A Reporting Level measures how many management levels separate an executive from the Chief Executive Officer.
Examples:
• Level 0: Chief Executive Officer
• Level 1: executives reporting directly to the Chief Executive Officer
• Level 2: executives reporting to Level 1 executives
These levels are also commonly described as:
• CEO
• N-1 executives
• N-2 executives
To keep organizational charts readable, The Official Board primarily displays:
• the Chief Executive Officer and Board of Directors
• N-1 executives
• N-2 executives
A typical organizational chart displays 20 to 50 executives.
Large groups may contain hundreds or thousands of executives across multiple organizational charts.
Why reporting levels matter
Reporting levels help identify:
• proximity to the Chief Executive Officer
• the executive's position within the management hierarchy
• likely participation in major decisions
3. Job Titles and Functions
Executive titles vary considerably between companies.
For example:
• Vice President Marketing
• Senior Vice President Marketing
• Executive Vice President Marketing
• Chief Marketing Officer
The prefixes Vice President, Senior Vice President and Executive Vice President do not represent the same reporting level in every company.
In one company, a Vice President may report directly to the Chief Executive Officer.
In another, a Senior Vice President may report through several additional management levels.
For this reason, every organizational chart displays:
• the official Job Title
• a Short Title
For example:
| Job Title | Short Title |
| Executive Vice President Marketing | Marketing |
| Senior Vice President Human Resources | Human Resources |
| Vice President Information Technology | Information Technology |
The Job Title preserves the company's own terminology.
The Short Title makes organizational charts easier to read and compare across companies.
4. Parent Companies and Subsidiaries
Large organizations are rarely limited to one company or legal entity.
They may include hundreds of subsidiaries organized by country, product, business line or customer market.
The Official Board connects these entities through a parent and subsidiary tree.
Each level indicates the subsidiary's position within the corporate group.
The levels may include:
• Parent company
• Child company (Level 1)
• Child company (Level 2)
• Child company (Level 3+)
For example:
Amazon — Parent company
AWS — Child company (Level 1)
AWS Europe — Child company (Level 2)
AWS Germany — Child company (Level 3)
Why subsidiary trees matter
Subsidiary trees help you:
• understand the full scope of a corporate group
• identify global, regional and local leadership
• distinguish parent-company responsibilities from subsidiary responsibilities
• understand how deeply a group operates within a country or market
• identify which entity is responsible for a product, geography or customer segment
• navigate complex international accounts more effectively
A parent and subsidiary tree can therefore reveal both the breadth and the depth of a company's global organization.
5. How Work Is Organized
Companies organize work in different ways.
Common organization models include:
• business units
• product platforms
• regional organizations
• customer segments
• centralized functions
• country operations
The organizational chart makes these choices visible through reporting lines, executive responsibilities and subsidiary relationships.
Understanding how work is organized can help explain whether authority is concentrated at headquarters, delegated to business units or distributed across regions and subsidiaries.
6. Matrix Organizations
Some companies use matrix organizations in which executives work across several reporting relationships.
For example, a country executive may work with both:
• a regional leader
• a global business or functional leader
These relationships often change by project or business situation.
They are therefore often difficult to verify and maintain consistently.
The Official Board displays the main reporting line: the most stable, publicly verifiable and organizationally significant relationship.
7. Coverage and Verification
The Official Board displays professionally relevant information that can be verified through reliable public sources.
Every day, our analysts monitor public sources to identify executive appointments, reporting-line changes and organizational updates. Each verified change helps keep organizational charts current.
When a reporting line, executive responsibility or subsidiary relationship cannot be verified with sufficient confidence, it is not displayed.
Reliability always takes precedence over completeness.
Each verified change helps keep organizational charts current.
8. Why Organizational Charts Matter
Organizational charts help answer practical questions such as:
- Who reports to whom?
- Who manages this activity?
- Who makes the decision?
- Which executive should I contact?
- Which subsidiary is responsible?
A Job Title describes an executive's role.
An organizational chart shows how the organization works.