Name: What Your Org Chart Reveals About the Future of Your Business
Uploaded: 2026-04-15T11:40:06.898Z
Duration: 23 min 22 s
Description: What Your Org Chart Reveals About the Future of Your Business

Transcript for "What Your Org Chart Reveals About the Future of Your Business": Hey, everybody. It's Gene Marks here. And let's be honest. Workforce planning is one of the toughest challenges that leaders are facing today. It's complicated. It's time consuming. And too often, it doesn't line up with where the business is actually headed. Right? So that's why I am excited to welcome OrgChart CEO, Tom McCarty, to the conversation. Tom is gonna break down why workforce planning feels so cumbersome. More importantly, he's gonna share some smart, practical tips to help you build a more efficient and strategic workforce plan for 2026 and beyond, one that actually supports your business goals and sets you up for success. And if you're looking for support along the way, OrgChart can help meet the needs of your business, big or small. So just click the explore OrgChart button in the upper corner of your screen to connect with a member of Tom's team. Let's get to the conversation. So first of all, Tom, all the way from Denver, thank you very much for speaking with me today. I'm I'm I'm glad you took the time. Yeah. Thanks so much, Gene. It's a pleasure to be on, and, looking forward to our discussion. Yeah. I you know, OrgChart, we were just talking before we started recording about, the importance of having an orange chart in your business. And I and I just have to say, I was I was telling you a story. I mean, I I have a client of mine, in, you know, in Texas. I have, like, time, like, a couple dozen times a year. I do a lot of speaking. I do a lot of writing, and then people ask me to come and visit their companies and make recommendations. So I do some consulting work. Right? I'm a CPA, by the way, so it's you know? So, nobody has word charts. You know? And and the people that are, like, you know, asking me to visit, you know, they're they're qualified candidates. I mean, this is like a, you know, these are companies that have a hundred, two hundred, sometimes five, six hundred people. And, you know, they've got, like, a rudimentary kind of thing built on Excel, but, they don't they they they don't have anything formalized, and it it kind of blows my mind. So I've got my thoughts on the matter, but, I mean, really, people are not listening to hear me. Let's let's let's hear your thoughts. You know, tell me about why I mean, you you know, why are OrgChart so important, and how does your company play into helping companies, create OrgChart for themselves? You you know, I think that it comes down to it's like, hey. Look at almost any company in the world, and, like, where are we making our biggest investment? Right? Like, well, you know, like, where are we spending the the the most money as a company? It's our people. And and you start to think about, well, okay. Well, how are you doing on that? Like, how are you how are you measuring yourself? How are you thinking about where you're deploying those resources, how they're structured, the work that they're doing. And, like, that comes down to your organizational structure, and you don't really connect the dots and see your team and see the way things work by looking at a spreadsheet. Like, you just you just don't. And there there's a reason we've always had organizational charts and structures. And when you're trying to explain your your your team and your company and you use these org charts to to someone outside the company because it's the most logical representation of how your team is structured and read done. But we need to be using them more internally, and we need to be thinking about different lenses of which we look at those org charts. Right? Not just the name, title, and reporting structure, but, you know, who are you? What's the the the role would you do? What's the skills you have? You know, what's your what's the budget, the department, the contractor versus full time status or the skills that you might have? Are you a critical skill or a key talent indicator? These are all different lenses you can put on those charts. So, like, really look at how well you're structured, how the work is getting done, and if there's opportunities for improvements within, within that that environment. You know, I all of that is great, and you're you're absolutely right. I I Some other reasons why I think org charts are so important is that, it gives a path for advancement for an employee, you know? I mean, I I have an I have another client who has a pretty good org chart, but and he's like, they they're like a manufacturer, and they have, like, production workers. And when they hire people, you know, there's, you know, there's there's assistant production, you know, there's staff production, there's senior production, there's manager production. And when and they all come commensurate with, like, you know, increases in hourly pay and other benefits. But when they when they hire somebody, they show them the OrgChart right away, and they're like, this is your path to succeed. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, assuming it's a big benefit. Right? Yeah. No. Absolutely. I mean, you know, transparency, of the organization and, like, where where do you sit? Where could you go? Not just that too, but, like, where does someone else sit? And and what are they working on? And and so, like, it's it's yes. You could see your path. You could see the different places that you could end up in the organization. No. No. Like, if you just assume that path is vertical and you're like, okay. Well, my next role is my manager's role and then their their role. It's more than that too, though. Like, well, I'm really curious about what's happening in the marketing department, and you can kinda see the the the the roles and the opportunities that sit in there too. So, yeah, absolutely transparency where collaboration and work overlap that all of that can come to life when when you actually have a good visualization of your work. I'll also ask you a comment on this on this comment as well. We have a lot of companies, and by the way, that's been in the news, you know, of late. Yeah. It it this goes in waves about the whole silver tsunami, you know, and how all business owners are getting older and Yeah. They're looking for succession plans and exit plans and all that. I mean, talk to me a little bit, like, about the value that this provides to a company. I mean, when you're looking to sell your company or if you wanna, you know, say you have private equity that's interested in you or an investor that's interested in you or another company, my experience is, when there's a potential buyer coming in that knows what they're doing, one of the first things they ask for is an OrgChart. Like, they Well, definitely. People. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they're not just gonna wanna just see the OrgChart. They wanna know about each person on that chart. They're gonna wanna know about the role they do. How committed are they? Are they a flight risk? Are they a key talent? Like, what's the like, they they wanna understand that. Right? Like, because it they're not just buying your p and l. Right? Like like, the the like, that p and l happens because of the people in the company and the way that you execute. So no. Absolutely. A a buyer, whether it's private equity or whether it's, you know, someone, you know, that's wanting to buy it to to run it just like you have been, yeah, they're gonna they're gonna absolutely wanna see it. That'll be one of the first things they they look at. You're in the and they're they're gonna wanna have you take them through it and and talk through your organization and the team and the and people in the company. And if you don't have one, not only is, you know, the the a potential buyer is missing out, but, just doesn't give a good perception. I mean, you know, I have clients that don't have org charts or their org charts aren't very good, and a potential buyer is like, what kind of company are we buying here? I mean, you you don't have an org chart. Yeah. The more the more buttoned up and documented and disciplined you are in all aspects, the the better your valuation ends up being, the better your outcome ends up being in situations like that. Who's in charge of this at a company? Where where where does the responsibility usually lay? You know, it it varies by size. You know, what we find is once you start getting into, like, organizations of, like, a 100 people, which, you know, you generally have an HR professional working in your team at that point. Right? Oftentimes, I think, especially in The US, once you're north of 50, you you really need HR, in in your organization and someone kind of helping to pay attention to the the health of the organization and all the compliance things you need to be doing and, it generally falls on HR. Like, the the first person you're gonna ask for is like, hey. It's people data. Right? So you're you're generally coming to your HR team to do it. Sometimes, you know, like, in large organizations, executive assistants might be getting asked to do that, but what we find is, you know, probably well over 90% of the time, it's HR professionals. It's someone in the HR department, and then they're going and manually creating that in PowerPoint or Visio or Lucid or just saying we don't have it. Right? You know, when you have it and you give that responsibility to HR, it's like this first step that then drives so many of the things. Every position obviously has their title. There's compensation and compensation benchmarking that needs to be done. You wanna start with where people are in the pecking order or in a chart. Same thing with job I was just talking with an attorney. I wrote a piece, just recently for the Philly Inquirer about, discrimination, you know, and how to avoid it. And, this attorney, was saying he's a labor attorney. He said, you really wanna avoid discrimination. One of the biggest steps you wanna take is make sure you've got really good detailed job descriptions for every single job in the company. So if somebody isn't, you know, qualified for a job and you turn them down for the job, you, you know, you you you reduce the chance of being sued because of it because they're you could you show them the job description. You're like, you you can't you know, you're not you know, you won't be able to fulfill the requirements of the job. But, like, even that ties into having an org chart because each title and each level needs to have their own it just drives everything from an HR perspective. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, look. I mean, certainly, there's there's, you know, things like compliance and and, you know, risk reduction for doing things like that. Absolutely. But you should have really good job descriptions and really good kind of skills and work inventory or job to be done inventory for each role because, like, again, you're you're deciding to put a full time person on that. Like, hey. What's the work that needs to be done? How do I know that that's the right role in the right place like that? Not just that I need that role, but I have that role on the right work and in the right place of the organization. And so, like, when I think about really great job descriptions and, like, the work you're doing, it's really around, like, organizational design and structure and, like, how do I optimize my team and how I'm investing and how I've structured everybody to make sure we're doing the right work to to, like, be as successful as possible in our organization. Got it. Alright. Let me, give you chance to do some selling here, or or you can tell me about OrgChart. I'd like to know about, the platform. I I wanna know about your relationship with Paychex. This is a Paychex podcast. I wanna you can share with me pricing, the different kind of levels. Walk me through, like, what your product does. Yeah. So we we will connect into, your HR data and any other, HR data you might have. So we we, obviously, we partner with Paychex. We connect directly into Paychex. We're gonna feed all of your data in to our platform. And what we're gonna allow you to do is have that direct connection, and you get to customize your org chart to look any way you wanted to. Right? So you may not just want name, title, reporting structure. Right? You might also want their location. You might want the department that they're in. You might want how long they've been at the company. And I'll talk about some different lenses you can use when you're looking at your team. And then, you know, it's always connected. So if you're ever needing to share that, one, we can give you an Internet link. You could just publish it on your internal page so it's always there. Your internal team can always instantly look and see it. You can export it to PowerPoint. It's gonna come over as an object, not just an image. So you can actually move it around if you need to, move it to a PDF if you need to submit it. So if you work in an area where you might need ISO or SOC compliance or SOX compliance or HIPAA compliance, all of those require org charts in your compliance packages. Right? We can export them in the formats you need. And so we allow you to always have that real time. Somebody changes roles the next day. The data feed is instant with Paychex to us, and you just click refresh and export it again, and you've got your accurate accurate one. No more ever manually drawing and creating any of these things again. And so that so that gives you sharp visibility into your organization, but then it will also let you put in more insights in. So maybe you've got a but you're you're planning your budget for next year, and you have a budget roll up. So you have your people, the butt the cost per per role, the total roll up of the total cost by department. Like, you could see all of that in an OrgChart, and, like, you're really seeing where am I putting my dollars at work. Right? You could have instead of you know, like, a lot of times in an HR, we'll we'll do nine blocks. Right? We all kinda know, like, the nine block indicators. So instead of just seeing names on a nine block, maybe you're looking at your chart, you see their nine block grid, you see how long they've been enrolled, their last performance review, and whether or not they have a critical skill. Right? Like, that's a much richer conversation now about the team. And then and then the last thing we do is we allow you to start to design the future state of your organization. So, let's say you just acquired another small company and you want you need to bring them together and design what the team needs to look like now. Now. You can do that in our software. Let's just say you're looking at where you're putting three more headcount next year. You can design that in the software. So any of your future scenario planning that you're doing, you can do, which, you know, I think in today's world, especially with how much things are changing with AI, it's, like, incredibly important to be intentional about looking at your organization and, like, what you believe the future of that structure needs to look like. It's great. How long has the company been around? So we were founded in 2013. K. And, our original product founder had, had been in the HR space, in the HR visualization space for, you know, probably fifteen, fifteen years before that. So Right. We've been we've been doing this for a long time. Okay. And, yeah, we're we're, certainly excited to continue helping, Paychex customers as well and, you know, really solving this problem for them so that they're not, having to manually do these again. This should be an easy question, but it's a it's a, it's an important question to ask. Because people, I'm sure, are are asking of you already, and, you know, you mentioned AI. So, it's really a two part question. The the first question is, like, hey, you know, an org chart, why can't I just go on to chat g p t and, you know, upload this information at chat g p t, create an org chart for me? So, respond to that, first of all. Like, why, you know, org chart, your product is, you know, is it is better. You know? It's why there's more value than just using a standard AI chatbot right now. Absolutely. You know? Well, first of all, it depends on what all you want to actually show. Right? So, like, I talked about doing a budget chart. You might not wanna put all of your payroll data into that right now and and and showing all that. So we do have sensitive data. We're we're we have security compliance standards. We are, you know, SOC two and ISO and all of that good stuff. We are able to mirror the, you know, the security settings you use within the paycheck, so only the right people are gonna see the data that you want them to see. Right? So you you may not want everyone in your organization to have access to what everybody what everybody makes, right, or what someone's performance review was last year. So we're dealing with pretty sensitive data, so I think security level of that. Also, it's just as you get into look. If you have 10 people and you just want name and title, give it a shot. You're probably gonna be okay if that's all you need. But if you're starting to get into this sensitive data, if you need to control who has what access to what, if you want to bring in larger sets of data and visualize that and structure it the way you want, that's where this really isn't what, the, you know, like, OpenAI or or Claude is as great at on that today. So right? And then and then, like, the workflow of actually planning your future today, that's that's really where you're designing inside of our software as well and not something you're gonna do with the with the AI. Which brings me to, you know, step two. So so clearly, I mean, you know, the the the AI chat bots, but, you know, in their current state and I think for the foreseeable future, they they are they are not a replacement for a tool like this. But I'm assuming you guys are leveraging AI. So talk to me a little bit about what you're doing now, what you're what you're planning on doing. Yeah. We're so I think there's two things. One, I'm gonna start first with how we're helping people, start to think about and plan for AI. And, like, this is one of the questions I get asked the most is like, hey. How should we be thinking about workforce planning now, in light of AI? And and look. As we're talking about workforce planning, you know, I think sometimes we think that this is all just larger organizations. But if you have 50 or 60 or 70 people and you're not thinking about what your team needs to look like in three years, in in over the next few years, like, you need to be. Right? Like, the because it's it's changing rapidly. And so, you know, the the building blocks of how you need to think about this are the same. It's like you have to first start with, like, a clear understanding of your current state of your organization. That's really what we do is bringing you the visibility in, like, the clear lenses of what you need, which is more than just, you know, the names of the people that are there. Right? And then you need to think about, like, where are you going and and, like, what's the goals that you have? What are the investments you wanna make? And what does it what's it need to look like to get there? And then that's when you start to then design kind of, okay. Well, here's here's the things that we think the work that's being done, that we think could be automated and how we need to think about that. Here's the team structure that we think it needs to look like next year and then the next year. And, well, do my does my team have the skills yet? And, like, how am I starting to think about that? How am I tracking those those skills on that? Right? So, like, I I firmly believe literally every company in the world should be thinking about how am I equipping my team in order to use AI tools in the future. Right? It is going to become in, you know, in the years ahead as as reflexive instinctive as we use a computer or our cell phones or Google to search something. Right? Like, it is just going to be a standard tool that we use, and we need to be thinking about that. And that's, like, part of that organizational design thing that we need to be doing. Yeah. It is, it it it's definitely gonna be a challenge for, a lot of leaders to adapt to this stuff. It's good to see that these capabilities are coming out, but, you know, it it it's also just really important that people are that, you know, we when we take a step back and we look at the people I feel are most successful in running their businesses, a lot of my clients, the people I interview, they're just constantly obsessing about their their teams, you know, and their people, their organization. I mean, they're, you know, they they divide their time between products and customers, but then also just their organization. And, I don't even know how you get started doing that without an orchard. Yeah. It's funny. I remember I I read years ago. I remember Jack Welch. He was, like, the CEO of GE. Yeah. The guy was, like, an iconic CEO. And, he wrote his book as well, when he his his autobiography. I mean, he he, you know, succeeded at GE because he spent twenty years being sent to different divisions and subsidiaries of GE, and then spending time there and basically hiring and firing people, moving people around in different roles. Like, he just had a genius for understanding where people would perform the best. You know? And if you read his book, he will he will reference to the fact that he, you know, he asked for and demands OrgChart when he goes out, to a different place because that how else does he get started? You know? And he looked now, you know, an organization is organized and, and it just makes changes to it. So it it I I think we've gotten that message across. It is definitely something that's really needed. How do you get started, though, Tom? You know? I mean, say, you know, when you go when companies do reach out for you first of all, the companies that come to you, at least they recognize there was a need. That's good news. You know? Yeah. Yeah. What do I do, like, when I go to a client and they don't have it? They never heard of you. And we haven't talked about your pricing yet, which which whatever you're willing to share would be great. But, I mean, like, they're like, you know, I I can do this on a spreadsheet or whatever. Like, you know, so I was like, what do I tell this client about the importance of building this in using, like, a platform like this? Yeah. You know? And and and how do they get started with it? Yeah. I mean, you know, obviously, a lot of people come to us because they're already trying to figure out how to do it. They're doing it manually, and we're like like, we'll make your IP easier. Right? Like, we'll take this away from you. You know, if you're starting to get to a certain size, and let's say you're thirty, forty, 50, not you're getting towards a 100, like, you really you'd need to be doing this. It's not hard to get started, by the way. Like, just give us a call. We'll connect your data and and and we'll you know, we can have you up and running very fast to where you actually see that. I think the next question, though, is what do you start to do with that? Right? Like so, like, actually producing this is easy. Like, that's the easy part. And and it's easy because you it's, like, we'll we'll automate all of that so you're not manually doing it. But now you need to start thinking about, okay, what are the what do I need to be answering? What are the things I need to think about and how I use this? And it's really like, look, like, take a moment to step back and look. If you I don't care if you have 10 people or 50 people or 500 people. You are spending a lot of money as a percentage of your total spend on people. And are you being intentional about that? And are you really optimizing that? And are you thinking about what you need next year or next in six months? And, like, these are the things. And what we do is allow you to have this visual representation. So you can sit in a room with your leaders. You can sit in a room with your managers, and you can do what Jack Welch did at a, you know, like a much larger level and say, okay, do I have the right people? Do I have the right people in the right places? Do they have the right skills for the work we need to do tomorrow? If they don't, what do I what can I do differently, and how do I get them there? Right? Like, these are the the things that you need to be thinking about. But to really have those conversations, you need this visual representation of your current state. Right? Best way to do that is, you know, just give us a call, and we can sync that up with your data, and and you're off to the races on that part. But it's it's this intentional thought process, the evaluation of your team, the structure of the people, do I have the right people in the right places? That's the work you need to be doing. Like, I don't I don't want you to get started with doing what many have always done and and manually creating this. I want you to get started on the conversations and the decision making you need to do about your organization. Makes sense. Tom, what what what does this cost? I mean, just round numbers. If if I have a company that's got, say say my company's got, you know, between a hundred, two hundred employees just just as an average. You know? Yeah. What What would they expect you need to pay for? Depending on depending on what all you're wanting, whether or not you have, like, multiple data sources, the complexity of your data. If you're just, you know, hey. I've got a 100 employees. I've I've got everything on paychecks, and I just need, like, a clear representation of my reporting structure. Yeah. You probably look a little, like, around, you know, $1,300 a year or so. Okay. Right? So a little over $100 a month. If you're a couple 100 people and you wanna do and you really wanna do your workforce planning and you have three maybe you've got three or four data sources, you're probably, like, looking at five, you know, $6,000 a year Right. To be able to do this. So it's it's we try to keep it pretty light and and pretty easy for relative to the size and the value you're gonna get out of it. Alright. That is great. Tom, it's been a great conversation. I really appreciate you joining me. You know, I I I the the the platform that you have is great, and I'm glad that you're partnering with Paychex on this stuff. So, thank you very much for spending your time. Appreciate you having me. Thank you again for joining us today for how to build a smarter workforce, featuring our conversation with Tom McCarty. As a reminder, you can access related resources and materials available within your console. And, again, to connect with a member of Tom's team about any questions you have on our OrgChart can help support the needs of your business, whether you're growing beyond 50 employees or already past that size, just click the explore OrgChart button located at the upper corner of your console screen. They'll be happy to help you sign your workforce planning with your business goals. Thanks again, and everybody have a great day. Take care.