Whether you like a hierarchical company structure or not, org charts are useful. It’s just important to remember that they don’t represent reality, they represent perception.
Being official doesn’t even make it reality. It is the perception that the head of the company has of the organization. In a small enough company it may be close enough to reality that you can call it reality, but in a large enough organization it can quickly diverge from reality.
Then you have the fact that there are different facets to company structure and one chart cannot represent all of them. For instance, you may have to get high up the chart before you are included in pay talks. In that case, the bottom of the pyramid gets squished significantly.
Certain projects also have different charts. Most of the company may fall off the edge of that chart, but the person who knows the most will end up high on that chart, regardless of whether they have direct reports or not.
So there are different org charts and lines of influence for different things around a company. If you are ever in doubt about who has influence over what and whom, then write your own org chart. Writing it down may give you a few surprises that you didn’t expect.
Brett R Huff 