When a company is small, everyone does a bit of everything and it works because everyone talks all day. Somewhere between ten and thirty people that stops working. Things fall between chairs, two people do the same job, and decisions wait for the founder because nobody else is sure it’s theirs to make.
An org structure fixes that. Not as a chart to put on the wall, but as a clear answer to two questions: which group owns which part of the business, and which person in that group owns which result. In Clarion, those answers live in your teams and in the owner field on everything your teams track.
Structure follows the work, not the people
The most common mistake is designing the structure around the people you have. “Sam’s good at operations and also does finance, so finance reports to operations.” That works until Sam leaves, and then nobody knows who owns cash.
Instead, start with the functions the business needs to run, whether or not you have someone for each yet. For most companies that’s some version of sales, marketing, delivery or operations, finance, and people. Then decide who leads each one. One person may lead two functions for now. That’s fine, as long as it’s a conscious choice and both functions are written down.
Build it as teams in Clarion
Every company in Clarion starts with a Leadership team. That’s the top of your structure: the people who run the business together.
Under it, create a team for each function, with Leadership as its parent. A function big enough to have its own sub-groups can have teams of its own beneath it. Customer Support might sit under Operations, for example. See create teams.
This structure does real work:
- Each team gets its own scorecard, milestones, challenges and sync. The sales team reviews sales numbers in its own weekly meeting, without crowding the leadership meeting.
- Leaders see the teams beneath them. The milestones, metrics and challenges pages show a roll-up card for each team that reports to yours, so the leadership team sees every department at a glance without attending every meeting.
- People see the teams they’re on. Owners and Admins see every team. Everyone else sees the teams they’ve been added to, so a new hire in support isn’t wading through finance’s numbers on day one.
Give every result one owner
A structure of teams is only half of it. Inside each team, every result needs a person’s name on it. In Clarion, every metric, milestone, challenge and action item has a single owner.
Use that field without exception. “The team” is not an owner. When something is shared, pick the person who’ll answer for it in the meeting, and let them pull in whoever they need.
A useful exercise: list the five to seven results each function is responsible for. These are usually the numbers on its scorecard. Put one name next to each. Where you can’t decide on a name, you’ve found a gap in the structure.
Leadership is a team, not a list of department heads
The leadership team’s job is the whole business, not representing their department. When the head of sales sits in the leadership sync, they’re there to help solve the company’s biggest problem this week, which might be in operations.
Keep the leadership team small. Five to seven people is plenty. Everyone in the room should own a function or a company-level result. If someone is only there to stay informed, the sync recap posted to the Hub will do that job.
Decide who administers what
Clarion has two levels of permission that matter for structure. Owners and Admins manage settings, teams, people and integrations, and see every team. Everyone else, whether invited as Full Access, Advisor or Contractor, works within the teams they belong to. Keep Admin to the people who genuinely run the account. See roles and permissions.
When you invite your team, you choose the teams each person joins at the same time, so their view of Clarion matches their place in the structure from the first login.
A review rhythm
- At each quarterly planning session: does each function still have one clear leader? Is anyone leading more than they can handle?
- When you hire a leader: move the function they now own to them in full, including the owner field on its metrics and milestones.
- Once a year: redraw it from scratch on paper. Compare it to what’s in Clarion. The differences are the conversations to have.
Common mistakes
Building around people. The structure should survive anyone leaving.
Shared seats. Two co-heads of one function usually means no head. If you need two people, split the function.
Too many layers. A thirty-person company rarely needs more than two levels below leadership.
Everyone on Leadership. A big leadership team turns the weekly sync into a status meeting.
Owner fields left blank. The structure on paper means little if nobody’s name is on the results. Check the scorecard and milestones for missing owners as part of checking company health, and share how to own a milestone with new owners.