How to Create an Organizational Chart

To create an organizational chart, start with the most senior role, add each person who reports directly to it as a box below, and repeat down the tree. Give every person exactly one solid reporting line, use a dotted line for any secondary relationship, and label boxes with role as well as name so the chart still means something after people move.

Live interactive diagramUse the player controls to follow the steps

Startup companyPlaying silently in this guideWatch with narrationOpen in editor

When an org chart is the right choice

An org chart answers who reports to whom, and almost nothing else. That narrowness is a strength — it is the fastest way to answer a question people ask constantly and guess at badly. It is worth drawing when:

• Someone is new. A new joiner's first week is mostly working out who does what. A chart collapses that.
• A reorg is being discussed. Proposals argued in prose sound reasonable; drawn out, an eleven-person span of control or a three-person layer becomes obvious.
• Escalation matters. When something needs a decision, the chart shows who can make it.

It does not show what teams work on, how work flows, or who influences whom in practice. Those are different diagrams, and stretching an org chart to carry them makes it worse at its one job.

An org chart is a map of accountability, not of collaboration. Everyone talks across the lines; only some people report along them.

The parts

• Box. One person or one role. Name plus title; a department as a secondary line where it helps.
• Solid line. The reporting relationship. Exactly one per person — this is the rule the whole notation rests on.
• Dotted line. A secondary or matrix relationship: a functional lead, a project owner. Genuinely useful, and genuinely overused.
• Box kinds. Diagramium distinguishes a standard person, a vacant position (dashed outline), a contractor (dash-dot) and a department box for a team rather than an individual. Vacancies in particular are worth drawing — an org chart that hides its open roles misrepresents capacity.

How to create an org chart, step by step

1. Decide the scope. The whole company, or one function. A chart that tries to be both is unreadable at both altitudes.
2. Start at the top of that scope — not necessarily the CEO. For a department chart, the department head is the root.
3. Add direct reports as one layer. Complete each layer before descending; going depth-first is how people end up with a lopsided draft.
4. Label with role, not just name. "Priya Raman — Head of Support" survives a departure; a bare name does not.
5. Mark vacancies and contractors. These change how a reader interprets the chart.
6. Add dotted lines last, sparingly. If most people have one, the structure is a matrix and you should say so explicitly rather than encoding it in dashes.
7. Read the shape. A manager with eleven reports, or a layer with one person in it, is information — the chart just told you something a list would not have.

Worked examples you can open and edit

Reporting relationships at a readable size

The nine-person startup chart is the size where the notation is easiest to judge: founders at the top, three functions below, and every line traceable in a second. It is worth opening precisely because nothing is hidden — you can see the whole accountability structure at once, which is the standard a larger chart should still try to meet within any one screen.

When the hierarchy is not people

The OKR cascade uses the same notation for objectives rather than employees: a company objective with team objectives laddering up to it. This is a legitimate use of an org chart and a good reminder of what the notation actually encodes — a strict tree with single parentage. Anything with that shape fits, whether the boxes are people, goals or assemblies in a bill of materials.

Layout advice

Org charts get unreadable in predictable ways, and most of it is layout rather than content:

• Let the tool arrange it. Diagramium auto-arranges the chart as you build, so the hierarchy stays balanced without hand-positioning that breaks on the next hire.
• Break wide layers. A row of fourteen peers is a horizontal scroll. Either group them under an intermediate role that genuinely exists, or split the chart by function.
• Keep siblings aligned. Same-level boxes on the same line is what lets a reader see the layer as a layer.
• Do not colour by seniority. Depth already encodes it. Spend colour on something the layout cannot show — function, location, or which boxes are vacant.
• Split rather than shrink. Below about 11px nobody reads the titles. A company chart plus one chart per function beats one unreadable poster.

Building one in Diagramium

Open the org chart editor. Boxes auto-arrange as you add them.

1. Add the root, then add reports under any selected person.
2. Set the box kind — person, vacant, contractor or department — in the inspector.
3. Add a dotted line for a secondary manager where one genuinely exists.
4. Press Present to introduce the organisation a team at a time — far better for onboarding than handing over a finished poster.

Writing an org chart from text

The Text editor tab holds the chart as an indented list, kept in sync with the canvas. For a chart of any size this is much faster than dragging, and it makes updates trivial:

title Support organisation

Amara Osei | VP Support
  Priya Raman | Head of Support | Americas
    Diego Alvarez | Support Engineer
    Open role | Support Engineer | vacant
  Tomas Vidal | Head of Support | EMEA | dotted:Amara Osei
    Lena Fischer | Support Engineer | @online
  Quality & Enablement | department

• Indentation is the reporting line — two spaces per level (a tab counts as two).
• Fields are separated by |: the first is the name, the next free-text token is the job title, and a second free-text token becomes the department.
• Box kind is one of person, vacant, contractor or department.
• A dotted reporting line is dotted:Name, naming the secondary manager.
• Status is @online, @away, @busy or @offline; a hex colour such as #6d7cff tints the box, and a single emoji sets its icon.
• title on its own line names the document; // starts a comment.

Text works for org charts, mind maps, sequence diagrams and sitemaps. Other editors are canvas-only.

Presenting and exporting

• Present reveals the chart branch by branch — the right pace for a new joiner meeting an organisation for the first time.
• Export PNG, SVG, PDF or plain text free without an account. SVG stays sharp for a wide chart, and the text export is the indented list above. Animated SVG, GIF and video need a free account, not a subscription.
• Embed a published chart in an internal handbook as an interactive player.

Common mistakes

• Two solid lines into one person. The notation's core promise is single accountability. Use a dotted line for the second.
• Dotted lines everywhere. If most people have one, draw the matrix explicitly instead — the dashes have stopped carrying information.
• Names without roles. The chart expires the moment anyone moves.
• Hiding vacancies. An open role shown as filled misrepresents the team's capacity to everyone reading it.
• One chart for a large company. Split by function; link the charts to each other.
• Hand-positioning boxes. It looks tidy until the next hire, then it is a manual layout job forever.

Related diagram types

• Ideas grouped around a subject rather than reporting lines: mind map.
• Who does which step in a process: swimlane diagram.
• Responsibility per deliverable as a grid: RASCI matrix.
• A website's page hierarchy, same tree shape: sitemap.

Questions people actually ask

What should go in each box?

Name and role at minimum. Department, location or status help on larger charts. Photos work for onboarding charts and are noise on structural ones.

How do I show a matrix or dual reporting?

One solid line to the primary manager and a dotted line to the secondary. If nearly everyone needs one, the organisation is a matrix and it is clearer to say that in the title than to encode it in dashes.

Should I include contractors and open roles?

Yes — as their own box kinds. A chart that shows only permanent staff quietly overstates the team, and vacancies are usually the most decision-relevant thing on it.

Can I create an org chart from text?

Yes. The Text editor tab takes an indented list with |-separated fields and stays in sync with the canvas — the quickest way to build or update a large chart.

How large can an org chart get before splitting?

When titles stop being readable at a normal zoom, or a single layer scrolls horizontally. Split by function and link the charts together.