Terms of Trade Guide
27th July 2022
Mindset: The Scope Model
16th September 2022
Having a clear organisational structure in your business allows you to operate more effectively. Developing the best structure for the processes in your business and defining the roles required will allow you to define who should be responsible within each department and the tasks or processes associated with each role.
This can enable you (as director or leader) to remove some of the ‘hats’ you are currently wearing and carefully assess any resourcing gaps or areas where improvement is needed.
The 10 departments within your business – and their functions.
All businesses can be broken down into 10 core departments with unique functions. Team members are then required to perform tasks relating to each department as part of daily business operations.
Strategic Departments
- Shareholder – The shareholder’s role is to fund the business.
- Directors – The directors set the direction for the business.
Operational Departments
- Leaderships – Leading the implementation of a plan to maximise business efficiency and performance.
- Product / Service Development. Developing new and existing products or services for sale.
- Operations / Delivery. Delivery of products or services to generate cash sales.
- Sales. Convert prospective clients or customers into actual clients or customers.
- Marketing. Generate leads for sales to convert into clients or customers.
- Finance. Manage the business’s cash.
- HR. Manage employment related tasks and issues and engage the team.
- Admin / IT. Manage office tasks and systems to maximise efficiency.
‘The business is there to serve you; not the other way around.’
Your organisation chart, along with strategy, systemisation and the establishment of best practice, is the solution to gaining more control over the direction of your business.
The purpose of an Organisation Chart
- Gain clarity over how the business works to serve the needs of the shareholders.
- Ensure the business is adequately resourced by people.
- Provide clear accountability – who is responsible for what.
- Show how the departments and positions interact.
- Link with the strategic plan to ensure the business can deliver.
The Organisation Chart forms the business’s spine. It holds the business upright and provides the link between the shareholders and the business activities. If the brain is the shareholders, the ideas from the brain filter down through the spine and out to the arms and legs to implement what the brain wants.
The five fundamentals to develop an Organisation Chart
Too often we see Organisation Charts gathering dust in drawers, within neglected Business Plans or on out of date websites.
If you want to reduce bottlenecks in your business, simply redefining your structure won’t be enough. Analysing what forms the structure is vital. We’ve developed five things that are critical for you to get the best from your structure and achieve your goals:
- Keep it visual. Develop a clear visual structure that shows how you work together. You can share this with your team (even displaying it on their desks), show it to potential employees at the interview stage, and to suppliers and customers where appropriate.
- Know your departments. Define what departments you require for your business model (these departments can then be reflected in your file storage and systems documentation so that ultimately the business can operate without you).
- Know the roles. Define the roles and positions that you require.
- Respect the hierarchy. Determine the hierarchy and how the positions and departments interact.
- Train the team. Ensure the team know the Organisation Chart and the protocols around it so that they respect it.
If you would like more tips about your organisation chart, please do get in touch and we can send you a more detailed download.
We also wrote a blog about the 10 Departments in every business. you can read it here.
