Roles and Reporting Structure
Who owns what, who answers to whom, and where the handoffs land.
The map only exists in pieces
In a lot of organizations the structure is informal. People worked out who handles what over time, and it holds together because the people who've been here a while have learned it.
But nobody has the whole picture. Your longest-tenured person knows more than your newest, you know some of it, and a lot of it has never been said out loud to anyone.
That shows up fastest with a new hire. They don't know who to ask about anything, and asking costs them something every time, so they guess, or they go to the wrong person, or they sit on a question for a week. Weeks of ramp-up get spent learning an org chart that could have been handed to them on day one.
It shows up elsewhere too. Two people both think a task is theirs, so it gets done twice or argued about. Something falls between roles and nobody notices until a customer does. A decision waits because nobody's sure whose call it is.
None of this means the structure is wrong. It means nobody has ever assembled the whole picture in one place.
Naming it is most of the work
I sit down with you and with the people doing the jobs, because those two accounts are rarely identical. Then I map what's actually happening: who does what, who decides what, where work passes between people, and which parts nobody has claimed.
That map almost always surfaces a few things worth talking about. A role that's absorbed three jobs because one person kept saying yes. A decision everyone routes to you that shouldn't need to. Two people quietly duplicating each other.
The output is an org chart and a set of role descriptions written in plain language. Not job postings, and not a corporate document nobody reads. Something that says clearly what each person owns and who they go to when something isn't theirs.
What this changes
The practical benefit is fewer dropped balls and faster decisions. But there's a second thing worth naming.
People want to know what they're responsible for. Working without a clear scope is stressful in a way that's hard to articulate, because you're never sure whether something is your problem, and being wrong either way costs you. Writing it down tells your team that their role is real and considered, and that someone has thought about what they do.
It also gives you something to point at when you're delegating, promoting, or hiring, instead of relying on an understanding that only exists in the room.
What this Usually Includes
Interviews with you and with the team
Mapping current roles, ownership, and decision rights
Identifying gaps, overlaps, and unowned work
An org chart that reflects how the business actually runs
Plain-language role descriptions
Clarifying who decides what, and at what threshold
Documenting handoffs between roles
A structure that has room for the next hire
Why me
I spent three and a half years at a marketing and PR agency and finished as Director of Traffic and Operations. Traffic sits at the center of who's doing what, which means I spent every day working across roles and seeing exactly where the structure held and where it didn't.
Before that I spent years in hotels and restaurants managing teams, and at one point building a banquet team from scratch because the need was there and nobody had done it. That's the version of this work where you find out quickly whether the structure is real. On a busy Saturday, unclear ownership isn't a management problem. It's a guest standing in a room where nobody's sure whose section it is.
What Comes Next
Writing Down How It’s Done
Knowing who owns a task is half of it. The other half is documenting how the task actually gets done, so it survives someone leaving.
Not Sure Who Owns What?
Tell me where things are getting dropped or duplicated. That's usually where the structure needs clarifying.