In this article, we’ll discuss circular org charts (or round org charts), a less conventional option that may help your company to open up lines of communication and encourage intradepartmental collaboration. But since McCallum’s original creation, other types of org charts have been created to accurately represent changing company cultures and hierarchies. Most of us are familiar with this top-down hierarchical org chart.
Instead of tracing an individual’s ancestry, his chart described the organization and hierarchy of the New York and Erie Railroad, with the board of directors as the “roots,” chief officers and superintendents as the “trunk,” and divisions and departments as the “branches.” McCallum called his creation a “Diagram Representing a Plan of Organization.” In 1855, a railroad engineer named Daniel McCallum designed what many consider the first modern business organizational chart. These family trees, or pedigree charts, usually present the oldest generations at the top of the chart branching out from the newer generations at the bottom. People have been using graphical charts for centuries to describe family organizations and relationships.
