With all its infinite possibilities, a blank canvas can feel overwhelming. Where to begin? What are you trying to achieve? Mapping your organization to clarify relationships, roles, and responsibilities is a big step. In this guide, we include how you should start mapping your organization, what to document and how to go about doing it.

Why mapping your organization?

Organizations are constantly changing. Individuals come and go. Work adapts to a shifting market. With so much going on behind the scenes, it’s difficult to keep track of:

• Who currently works with whom and on what?
• Where is help needed?
• Who has the authority to make what decision?
• What exactly is our organization working towards?

Mapping your organization helps you represent the reality of ongoing work, brings team alignment, helps efficiently distribute work, and gives everyone the information necessary to find how they can best contribute

How is Holaspirit organized?

Your workspace is based on Circles (i.e. Teams) and Roles (Activities). It's in the heart of the platform, and it provides you with an organized way to break down your organization into self-organized items and describe what needs to be accomplished around clear purpose and accountabilities.

Read more on how to structure your organization with roles.

Start to map

It’s time to add content to your organization chart. The goal is to condense work into roles that actively contribute to your organization’s purpose. Be careful to describe roles that reflect the current reality — not an idealised future.

Step 1 – Enter your organization's name

Step 2 – Edit your general circle

Editing the broadest circle in the organization will allow you to lay the first stone of your organization. You just need to be a member of that circle to be able to work on it!

Step 3 – Defining roles

Many organizations already have some form of an organizational structure documented (e.g. in charts, spreadsheets, or a drawing on PowerPoint). If the document is up to date, start from there. On the other hand, if this is the first time writing down roles and responsibilities, do not despair. You might be able to piece together written traces of your structure scattered across other documents such as job descriptions, job ads, or email signatures.

👉 Start by creating roles

Start with the name. Try to make it obvious what the role achieves, like Webinar Master  or Key Accounts Manager. Next, provide a short description of the role’s purpose, answering the question “Why does this role exist?”. For example, the purpose of the Key Accounts Manager might be: “Offering a smooth experience and continued success for our key clients.”

We are often asked how much detail goes into describing roles and responsibilities. If you're unsure, only describe the minimum amount to ensure mutual understanding across the team.  You can always start with a minimal description and later elaborate as your map evolves.

⭐ Pro tip: Use Role Templates

Save time by creating a library of role templates. If you have roles that will be part of different teams, create templates to import in your chart.

Step 4 – Grouping roles into circles

Now that you’ve mapped the roles, it’s time to add structure. Grouping roles helps to gather those who frequently work together. When considering how to group roles, here are some ideas: you can group roles into themes or topics, product category, geographical areas...

No matter how you cluster your roles into groups in this first design, you can always re-organize them in the future to better optimise collaboration and match the ever-changing reality of how you really work together.

👉 You must first create the circle, the same way you create a role, and then move the roles inside.

When mapping your organization, you might also need to delete roles and circles. Here's how:

Invite your Team

The process of creating your org chart is closely connected to who you involve.

Who should do all the mapping work? What options exist for people who participate in drafting your map? We have observed a wide range of methods.

At one extreme, consider a fully centralised process: a single cartographer describes each role and its responsibilities and then assigns team members to their roles. On the other extreme lies a fully decentralised process: every member within the organization participates by creating and describing their own roles.  

There are also in-between options. For example, a small team of volunteers might lead the project, or a representative from each team or department might take responsibility for filling in their own section of the map. No matter what method you choose to start mapping, you will want to share your org chart later to the all the people to help them embrace this new transparency.

👉 Invite a user – involve the people who will be working in the Roles.  Find the option to Add Member under the Management of users section of the Admin menu.

What if some users do not require full access to the tool? Check out the different types of members (Admin, User, Inactive) and choose the right status depending on your needs.

If you need to import a list of users? Contact us at hello@holaspirit.com

Assign roles

Each person in your organization can hold multiple roles. Roles can also have multiple role holders. As Admin, you can simply assign roles to users.

After assigning people to roles, be sure to ask everyone to verify that their roles comprehensively represent their ongoing work and that they know how to search for specific roles or accountabilities.

Set up your organization

Transparency and self-management do come with a set of rules. Go check your admin panel and set up some important settings on how your organization is structured.

👉 Setup my circle settings

⭐ Pro tip: Roles and Circles can have custom fields (skills, compensation tiers...). This info comes up using the Search. You can use them to help people easily find what they're looking for in your organization.

See it in video 🎬

Check out our Holaspirit presentation video below!

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