Introduction to Org Charts

Why a well-structured Org Chart is key to understanding how your company operates and how it can scale.

Written by Tommy Mains

Updated at April 29th, 2025

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Table of Contents

What Is the Org Chart Tool What Is a Seat? How a Structured Org Chart Supports Your Organization Roles and Responsibilities Examples How the Org Chart Supports Ninety's Other Tools Helpful Resources

What Is the Org Chart Tool

Use the Org Chart tool to structure your company's core functions to help you get the Right People in the Right Seats to achieve your Vision.

 

What Is a Seat?

A Seat is a position with function-specific roles, accountabilities, and responsibilities. We use the Org Chart to provide an overview of the various Seats, and their lines of reporting that we need to operate. 📖 Learn more.

 

 

How a Structured Org Chart Supports Your Organization

An efficient and effective organizational structure establishes a solid foundation for all your team members to fully understand their:

  • Roles — The titles and subtitles describing the functions of their Seat.
  • Accountabilities — How success in the Seat is measured, to whom you're accountable, and the team(s) you may be accountable for. 
  • Responsibilities — The specific duties required of each of the Seat's roles.

Roles and Responsibilities Examples

Roles and responsibilities usually occur in pairs, with roles associated with a titled function of a Seat and responsibilities linked tasks and processes. Below are a couple of examples of a role and its responsibilities for a given Seat — most Seats have multiple roles.

  • Visionary
    Role: Research and development.
    Responsibility: Creative roadmap for one product a month.
     
  • Head of Sales
    Role: Turn qualified leads into customers.
    Responsibility: Develop, refine, and perfect sales strategy.
  • Head of Operations
    Role: Deliver the final product on time and within requirements.
    Responsibility: Smooth barriers and maintain a strong communication strategy.
 
 

 

When every Seat is described by its roles, accountabilities, and responsibilities (RARs), the Org Chart can be used to review and hire personnel.

Given half a chance, people are keen to get on with their work, and to have work to get on with. What is missing is an adequate organizational framework within which to work and to cooperate with each other.
 

-Elliot Jaques, Requisite Organization
Excerpted from our 90u Library Guide, On Structure

 

How the Org Chart Supports Ninety's Other Tools

The Org Chart clearly identifies who is responsible for each facet of your company. Ninety promotes the “Structure first, people second” approach to organizing your departments, teams, and seats.

Click through the tabs below to learn more about how the Org Chart tool supports some of our other core tools.

Data

For team members to be accountable to their Seat's functions, we recommend each Seat have at least one to three KPIs. Keep track of these KPIs in the Data tool to measure performance and quickly create Issues when a KPI is off track.

 
 

1-on-1

To create a Quarterly or Annual Discussion in the 1-on-1 tool, users need to have a Seat reporting to them in the Org Chart.

 
 

 

Helpful Resources

From the 90u Library:

From our blog:

 
seat right people right seats roles and responsibilities accountability chart responsibiliites chart chart delegate and elevate free intro org charts

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