Mizan Lens · Structure

Structure Analysis

Your org chart is a set of decisions somebody once made — who reports to whom, and how wide a manager was asked to stretch. The free analysis describes those decisions back to you: the shape of the span distribution, the depth profile, the anomalies, and how far the chart departs from a clean tree. It attaches no verdict, because there is no defensible one to attach.

What it examines

The distribution of spans rather than an average of them, split between managers of managers and managers of individual contributors. The depth profile. The management ratio. Managers with exactly one direct report. Structural anomalies — people listed under two managers, reporting loops, separate trees in one file. And Krackhardt's four outtree axioms, which say how far the chart departs from a clean tree.

Why there is no score

There used to be one, and we removed it. It measured how uniform your spans were and called that health, so sixty people reporting to a single manager scored better than an ordinary organization. That was not a formula that needed fixing. No source that discloses its data claims an optimal span of control, and the one study that tested the optimal-span hypothesis directly rejected it. A single composite index would also have to carry weights, and weights in an index like that are value judgements presented as arithmetic. So the analysis describes and does not grade. How we check ourselves sets out what we retired and why.

What you provide

Organization chartTwo columns, employee and manager — no names needed, titles workCSV or TXT — template provided

What you receive

  • The span distribution — median, middle half, 90th percentile, widest, and the full histogram
  • The depth profile, the management ratio, and the managers with exactly one direct report
  • Structural anomalies, and the four measures of how far your chart departs from a clean tree
  • The arithmetic behind every figure, and a section on what a reporting chart cannot tell you
  • A report you download; the narrative reading and prioritized recommendations are the consultancy engagement
Run the analysis Next: Culture Analysis

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