Rethinking the Organisational Chart: Paradigm Makers Moonlit Minds Journal

The org chart's original goal was to visualise the organisation as a living ecosystem rather than a hierarchy, so how did we end up with a pyramid?

Author

Jess Price
November 03, 2025

Welcome to the 14th edition of Paradigm Makers Moonlit Minds Journal.

Table of Contents

Jess’ Monthly Reflection

This month, we’re exploring the humble organisational chart. Stay with me - it’s more exciting than it sounds!

Let me start with a bias.

The org chart of the future already exists. It was drawn in 1855 by Daniel McCallum and George H. Henshaw for the New York and Erie Railroad Company. Rachel Botsman’s LinkedIn post introduced me to it, and I immediately backed a Kickstarter to buy four postcards for AU$100.

Why? Because it’s beautiful and looks like how I imagine work can be: a living tree. When McCallum explained his design, he spoke my language: system, connection, whole. The tree shows how executive decisions flow into the health of every branch. It hints at executive job titles acting as stewards, not status symbols.

McCallum, D. C., Henshaw, G. H. & New York And Erie Railroad Company, P. (1855) New York and Erie Railroad diagram representing a plan of organization: exhibiting the division of academic duties and showing the number and class of employés engaged in each department: from the returns of September. [New York: New York and Erie Railroad Company] [Map] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017586274/.

I know I’m getting ahead of the history. But after months of reflection, my fascination hasn’t faded. A picture says a thousand words, and this one captures what our organisations keep saying they want.

So instead of a neat timeline, here are some different questions:

  • If this living org chart resonates now, why didn’t it stick in 1855?

  • How did we end up with pyramids and boxes?

  • Why did it take nearly 150 years to resurface?

Those questions took me through five eras, beyond visuals into inherited defaults and toward how McCallum’s idea could shape a new paradigm for an inclusive, accessible and sustainable world.

Enjoy November’s Beaver Moon (which is also a Supermoon!),

Jess Price

Founder & Chief Vision Officer

P.S. Back in January, I set a small goal to speak at five events in 2025. With two months to go, I have one left. If you’re seeking a lived experience speaker for International Day of Persons with Disabilities (3 December) or another event, reply to this email. I’d love to contribute.

EXPLORING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Research Approach: AI-assisted synthesis to access and distil credible historical and contemporary sources; insights cross-checked; sources included. Synthesis is also non-exhaustive, highlighting specific events relevant to this theme. These eras are based on the most widely accepted dates of the four industrial revolutions.

The Making of the Org Chart

In 1855, McCallum and Henshaw created the first known corporate org chart for the Erie Railroad. McCallum argued that to be efficient and successful, “a system of operations … should be such as to give to the principal and responsible head of the running department a complete daily history of details in all their minutiae.” (Erie Railroad, 1855, pg 34) The Board of Directors approved and implemented his reorganisation, the tree-like diagram and six principles of administration: division of responsibility, delegated power, transparent feedback, prompt correction, daily visibility, and immediate accountability. The chart signalled the beginning of systems thinking in management. And then it vanished for more than a century.

Pre-Industrial (before 1760)

Before org charts and chains of command, society was structured by rigid hierarchies of crown, church and guild. Roles were inherited and status was fixed, so ‘who you served’ mattered more than ‘where you sat’. Innovation was influenced by military and religious models, which managed complex operations at scale. The Catholic Church refined administration, and fifteenth-century double-entry bookkeeping built trust, letting owners delegate work while tracking accounts. Organisations served royal and elite profit through exploited labour (enslaved people, serfs, low-paid artisans). Power was explicitly top-down, and this deference carried into early workplaces. Hierarchical templates and the idea of a chain of command come from military and church influences (e.g. chief, director, staff). This is also when work became family, because in most cases, you worked with your literal family.

First Industrial Revolution (1760-1840)

Factories turned implicit hierarchies into visible shop-floor layers. Identity shifted from artisan to employee, with agency traded for time-discipline enforced by masters and foremen. Factory owners built supervisory hierarchies to encourage standardised processes based on Adam Smith’s division of labour. The steam-driven printing press (1810s) enabled mass paperwork for record-keeping and communication at scale. Industrial capitalism took shape, redefining value around productivity and profit. A culture of authoritarian management prevailed, with foremen exercising near-absolute power on the factory floor. The language of ‘top-down control’ and ‘human resources’ originated here, cementing the manager-worker imbalance. The idea of a corporate pyramid was established.

Between the first and second revolutions, McCallum devised his new system of operation. To overcome my bias, I thought it important to understand how it was implemented (spoiler: it wasn’t as beautiful). McCallum developed a high degree of organisational specificity to integrate the six principles, including prescribed uniforms with insignia of their grade, comprehensive rules limiting workers’ ability to complete tasks as they pleased and requiring completion of specific safety tasks, even when unwarranted (Wren, 1979, p86). In 1857, McCallum resigned from Erie Railroads following a six-month engineers’ strike in response to principle 6 - immediate accountability (Wren, 1979, p87). While this lack of autonomy and personal agency continued, the diagram didn't.

Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914)

The modern org chart emerged as firms scaled and management professionalised. The new managerial class was defined by position and promotion within this chart. Meanwhile, factory workers faced long hours and regimentation, breeding alienation and early labour movements. Fredrick Taylor’s 1911 Principles of Scientific Management promoted the ‘one best way’ method, separating planning from execution, creating new specialist roles. Typewriters, carbon copy paper and adding machines (1870s-80s) extended the reach of the printing press, allowing management to delegate further. Industrial capitalism peaked as trusts and corporations amassed capital and centralised power at the top of corporate pyramids. By the early twentieth century, Max Weber observed a trend, describing the perfect bureaucracy as a technically efficient organisation governed by files, rules and hierarchy. This became the defining legacy of how we continue to visualise organisations.

Third Industrial Revolution (1970-2006) 

The computer flattened some layers but preserved the pyramid’s silhouette. Alfred Chandler codified managerial capitalism with his thesis ‘structure follows strategy’ and the multi-divisional (M-form) model. The 1970s matrix organisation, with dual reporting lines, sought to break silos and increase flexibility. GE CEO Jack Welch eliminated layers in the 1980s, pursuing a ‘boundaryless organisation’, an approach explored by the ‘father of management’ Peter Drucker and anarchist Colin Ward. And while the 1990s saw corporations experiment with flatter structures, M-form continued to dominate. Information Technology enabled the flow of data top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top at unprecedented speed, reducing the need for some hierarchical controls. However, the late twentieth century saw economic paradigms shift toward globalisation and shareholder primacy. Maximising stock price and quarterly profits became the dominant goal, leading to downsizing and redundancy as the standard way to lift profits. CEO-to-worker compensation rose from 35.6x (1980) to 371.7x (2000). By the early twenty-first century, some of the old unwritten rules were being challenged, while new ones were quietly taking their place. New models emerged, including stakeholder theory and the rise of social enterprises. Culturally, the loyalty-for-security pact collapsed, leaving employees on their own. The third industrial revolution’s legacy is ambivalence. It gave us a vision of more flexible, human organisations, but normalised instability.

Fourth Industrial Revolution (2011-now) 

The rise of digital platforms made coordination ambient and control invisible. Individuals began to assert more identity, and younger generations placed higher value on purpose, authenticity and inclusion. This alignment of work and values has driven radical experiments in organisational design. Trends include the rise of platform organisations based on networks and marketplaces (e.g. Amazon) and self-managing models like Zappos’ Holacracy, which removes managers for distributed authority. Now, the conversation has shifted to blockchain-enabled Distributed Autonomous Organisations (DAOs), which promise decentralisation without hierarchy. Advanced technology both enables and disrupts organisational structure, yet the pyramid persists. Record corporate profits and CEO pay (over 1,200% increase since 1978) coexist with calls for living wages and climate action. The current paradigm carries forward past inertia, even as it edges towards change. Despite talk of flatness, most firms still function as pyramids, with stacked reporting lines.

What this reveals 

Across five eras, the evolution of the org chart reveals a gradual solidification of power into a formal structure. What began as implicit authority, rooted in lineage, land or religion, became formalised through ranks, reporting lines and scalable hierarchies. Each era layered new tools, ideologies and efficiencies onto the same design: a pyramid concentrating control at the top. Even experiments in flattening or decentralisation have struggled to change this architecture. While modern rhetoric champions agility, inclusion and distributed leadership, most economic rewards, decisions and visibility still flow upward, producing Gilded Age inequality as billionaire wealth breaks records. The org chart’s true legacy is not how we organise work, but how we justify inequality.

IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES FOR TODAY

The Shape That Still Shapes Us

We see org charts as neutral tools that show who reports to whom. But behind the tidy boxes and cascading lines sits an encoded history. Hierarchies didn’t emerge accidentally; they were designed, inherited and reinforced to manage trust, control labour, and concentrate authority.

This is why most org charts still look like pyramids. The structure isn’t broken. It’s working as originally intended. But what if the org chart was meant to serve as a tool to visualise how everything fits together?

What’s still active?

Despite new job titles and tools, five legacy defaults anchor today’s organisations. We still:

  • define status by vertical position. Even in ‘flat’ teams, being closer to the top by title, access or pay signals power and value.

  • reward predictability over experimentation. Structures may talk agility, but innovation is filtered through approval chains and risk-averse cycles.

  • design tech to monitor. From factory punch clocks to today’s productivity dashboards, tools are used to track compliance.

  • concentrate rewards at the top. CEO pay ratios, equity allocation and bonus structures preserve the pyramid, even when performance is collective.

  • assume leadership means control. Language like ‘direct reports’, ‘top brass’ or ‘manpower’ reveals how command-and-control logics are embedded in our cultural operating system.

Where do the frictions live?

But cracks are showing. We say we want new ways of working with more trust, purpose and participation. Yet old defaults resist:

  • We say ‘bring your whole self to work’, but still reward conformity to role and rank.

  • We celebrate experimentation, but design systems that penalise failure and reward risk-aversion.

  • We invest in collaboration tools, yet instead of reducing bureaucracy, we use them to accelerate reporting.

  • We praise stakeholder capitalism, but structure incentives around quarterly profits.

  • We praise decentralised decision-making, but still expect final sign-off from the top.

How can we escape the hierarchy?

I’ll admit, even I find this one difficult, but here are five small ways to start:

  • Map your growth network: Instead of asking ‘Who do you report to?’, ask ‘Who do you learn from?’

  • Test decentralised decision-making: Run a 30-day ‘no-permission’ experiment letting teams solve without escalation (guardrails allowed).

  • Find new purpose: Shift one tool’s purpose from tracking to learning, using dashboards to surface questions, not just metrics.

  • Acknowledge contribution over control: In your next team reflection, ask ‘Who created value?’ before ‘Who approved it?’

  • Swap job titles in one meeting: What changes when the ‘junior’ leads and the ‘senior’ follows?

Redefining the language

The org chart was never just a diagram. It’s a worldview that encodes who gets seen, who decides and how value moves. It taught us power flows down, worth climbs up, and coordination means control. But what if we redefined structure not as a ladder, but as a living system? What if hierarchy weren’t the default, but one option among many? The words we use (leadership, organisation, report, resource) carry the weight of centuries. Redesign begins when we ask what those words should mean now. Not for the sake of novelty, but for coherence. For dignity. For a system that trusts people the way McCallum once imagined: rooted, distributed and alive.

CREATING A NEW PARADIGM FOR TOMORROW

Designing a Living System

McCallum’s 1855 tree-like diagram revealed a truth modern management has nearly forgotten: organisations are not a machine to be controlled but a living system to be coordinated. The tree form wasn’t decorative; it was practical. Yet in execution, it failed to consider that humans are not machines. Management by control became the dominant narrative, and org charts were reduced to where people sit in the pyramid.

In an inclusive, accessible, and sustainable world, why not use the org chart to contemplate the organisation as a whole? We combine what makes us human with a system of operations for organisational functions. We create a model that allows flexibility for individuals, yet structure for teams and the organisation.

Here are 5 principles I'm proposing for the new inclusive, accessible and sustainable world:

People: From hierarchy to ecosystem 

The org chart becomes a relational map of belonging. Instead of ranking people by status, it shows how skills, care, and influence flow through the system. It visualises who connects, mentors, and learns from whom. Authority rotates with context, and visibility is shared. The structure supports inclusion by recognising contribution across ability, identity and circumstance. Functionally, it creates a living network of trust and mutual accountability.

Innovation: From efficiency to experimentation 

The org chart becomes a prototype of adaptability. It flexes as projects emerge, dissolving rigid departments in favour of dynamic constellations. Innovation thrives in open participation, where anyone can propose, test, and evolve ideas. Inclusion is built in, and systems are co-created with those most affected. It functions as a responsive design canvas for collective creativity.

Technology: From control systems to sensemaking systems 

The org chart becomes a dashboard of relationships. Technology visualises coordination in real time, highlighting dependencies, shared goals and care loops. AI and data act as mirrors, surfacing invisible work and unseen contributors. Sustainability means technology extends human capability rather than replaces it. Rather than a tool for surveillance, the org chart becomes a digital ecosystem that helps people see.

Economics: From extraction to regeneration 

The org chart becomes a value flow diagram. It maps how care, energy and resources circulate, ensuring transparency in contribution and reward. Sustainability becomes structural, rewarding stewardship over control. Power is measured by how much one enables others, not how much one earns. The org chart visualises a company’s contribution to a regenerative economy.

Norms: From obedience to shared stewardship 

The org chart becomes a cultural artifact we want to hang on our wall. It codifies shared agreements, how decisions are made, how conflict is resolved and how learning is honoured. The invisible becomes visible through rituals of reflection and consent. Inclusion means every voice shapes the rules of engagement. It becomes a living constitution of collective responsibility.

The pyramid endures not because it’s effective, but because it’s familiar. Every attempt to flatten or decentralise has failed because the meaning was left unchanged. McCallum’s living tree offers a forgotten alternative: coordination through visibility and stewardship. Reclaiming that logic requires embedding humanity into structure. An organisation is no longer a hierarchy to climb, but an ecosystem to tend, where accountability moves from managerial to mutual and structure serves purpose, not power.

DESIGN WHAT COMES NEXT

We Can Design a Forest

McCallum showed that structure is simply choices made visible. Agency begins where you can influence one choice. Imagine your organisation as a tree. Start with your branch and trace its flow to the roots. As you go, ask yourself:

  • If your role were a branch, what roots sustain it, and what new shoots could it support?

  • What rituals, feedback loops or experiments could become the ‘growth rings’ of your organisation so you have visible traces of learning over time?

  • How can our tools expand collective understanding?

  • If value circulated like nutrients, where would your system be overfed or starved?

  • What habits or unwritten rules block sunlight from reaching new ideas?

Reflecting on these questions, I see why we default to pyramids and boxes. It’s easier. But organisations exist for humans, so their structure must reflect that. McCallum conceived the railway line as a living thing where every person was accountable for their contribution, and each division performed its functions without interfering with others. Isn’t this still the goal of organisations today?

Imagine a world where every organisation, institution and government saw itself as a tree. Over time, we could grow a forest, creating an ecosystem of interdependent structures where each action shapes the next. The impact would be visible because we’d all be working toward the same ultimate goal: an inclusive, accessible, and sustainable world. It may sound idealistic or impossible, but that’s why Paradigm Makers thinks in fifty-year horizons. Forests and systems worth having take time to grow.

Until next time,

Jess

P.S. If you’ve made it this far, thank you! I think of you when I write these newsletters. If you’d like to support me, I’m participating in an upcoming 20 Hours for 20Talk challenge to raise donations for youth mental health. For 20 hours, I’ll be sitting in a 2 by 2 metre square, in silence and without technology. For any gift over $50, you can choose a topic for a 2026 edition of Moonlit Minds.

P.P.S The concept of org charts didn’t evolve in isolation. If you enjoyed this edition, you might also like:

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