visualization

"The frame work of the entire organization should be sketched, and the particular place in the scheme of things which his department and his position occupy should be explained. Almost any one can be shown a particular location on a map. An organization chart is a map."

"Organization aims to unite individuals into a body which shall work together for a common end. Specifically, organization prepares for the transaction of business by electing and appointing officers and committees, delegating authorities and bringing into systematic connection and cooperation, each and every part of the industrial body. Right organization, in short, puts vitality into the entire factory, secures the efficient working-together of all employees, from the manager's office to the mechanic's bench, routes materials, sub-divides work, inspects output and delivers the right goods, fully processed, at the shipping room door on the correct delivery date. In analyzing organization work, a single chart can frequently express more than any amount of detailed written explanation. First of all, clearly define authorities within your establishment ; then chart those authorities simply and graphically, so that every workman knows to whom he is responsible, and every executive knows who is responsible to him. Place this chart conspicuously in every department where each employee can see it. In case of disputed authority, final proof is immediately at hand. There is then no loop-hole through which a neglectful workman, foreman or executive can crawl no longer does he have the excuse that he "thought somebody else was going to do it." In clean-cut form, his duties and relations to other men of the organization are laid down once and for all, and responsibility rests on the right man. Failure so to specify responsibilities inevitably means confusion all down the line."

"Organization charts. — A chart showing clearly the line of authority and of responsibility of each individual in an organization will go far toward removing many inter-departmental jealousies. The chart should be so simple that it is self-explanatory upon inspection. Each man's position is thus made perfectly clear and he easily informs himself as to what course to take when transacting business with other departments. If applied to a factory, each workman will know to what particular gang boss or job boss he is directly responsible; each gang boss or job boss will know to what foreman he must report; and each foreman will know to what superintendent he is responsible; and each superintendent will know where his authority begins and ends with respect to other departmental heads. Further-more, the chart should show who is responsible for machines and equipment. To be most effective the chart should be hung in a conspicuous place. Each of the manufacturing departments should have one as well as the office; 24x36 inches is a suitable size. When made in the form of blue-prints charts are inexpensive, but they should be framed and protected by glass, to shield them from pencil markings and other injuries."

"What may be termed the anatomy of an industrial body, is most graphically shown by means of charts. Free use of charts will be made throughout these papers. With properly designed charts the logical divisions of authority or expense can be clearly shown. Fig. 1 furnishes a graphic illustration of the principal components of the organization under discussion. In the first group we find the owners (stockholders) whose line of communication with the business is through the board of directors. Subordinate to the board of directors are its own executive officers, the executive committee, and general manager. The connecting lines show the executive committee to be in direct communication with the board of directors, while the general manager is in direct communication with both the executive committee and the board of directors. Under the general manager are the commercial and manufacturing divisions, over both of which he has direct supervision."

"The tendency of modern commercial systems to find expression in organization charts has heretofore confined itself principally to manufacturing plants and secondarily to retail and wholesale houses. Such a chart as applied to an organization whose business it is to do building work is of peculiar interest not only because it is an innovation, but because of the many phases of work, none of which are necessarily dependent on the other from a business standpoint, which it must cover."

"Some officials being disposed, not infrequently, to regard themselves as equal, if not superior to men who are really their masters, it is essential to the well-being of all industrial concerns to have a definite organisation under which responsibility may not only be fixed, but the relative positions or rank of the officials clearly defined. For this purpose it is necessary to have recourse to a diagram such as the Specimen (see image)... The diagram should be carefully drawn in bold lines and clear letters on a sheet of drawing paper not less than 'double elephant' size. It should then be framed and placed in a conspicuous position in the general offices... The diagram can of course be varied to suit particular organisations, though, as it stands, it is as nearly as possible in accordance with the general practice prevailing in this country..."

"The work of all those listed in the organization chart is impossible to acknowledge adequately."

"It is sometimes stated that the typical organization chart is undemocratic in that it emphasizes the superiority and inferiority of people and positions."

"An organization chart is a drawing depicting how the responsibilities and functions of the organization are divided up among its workers. It usually shows who reports to whom."

"The Erie's general superintendent (Daniel McCallum) stressed the value of adhering to explicit lines of authority and communication. "All subordinates should be accountable to and be directed by their immediate superiors only; as obedience cannot be enforced where the foreman in immediate charge is interfered with by a superior officer giving orders directly to his subordinates." McCallum, nevertheless, failed to define precisely the relationship between the geographical division superintendent and the other functional managers of the division who reported to the general superintendent. He saw the problem clearly enough, pointing out that there were "some exceptions" to the rule that subordinates can communicate only through their senior officers. For example, "Conductors and station agents report, daily, their operations directly to the General Superintendent," and not to their division superintendents. He thought that the general superintendent would have the time and information needed to coordinate these activities. To illustrate more clearly these lines of authority, McCallum drew up a detailed chart-certainly one of the earliest organization charts in an American business enterprise."

"The organization chart will initially reflect the first system design, which is almost surely not the right one […] as one learns, he changes the design... Management structures also need to be changed as the system changes…"

"No organization chart is likely ever to be displayed in a major art museum. What matters is not the chart but the organization. A chart is nothing but an oversimplification which enables people to make sure that they talk about the same things in discussing organization. One never makes."

"An organization chart is not the organization itself. Nevertheless, as in the case of the road map and the road system it represents, we can better understand and communicate many aspects of the organization with the benefit of a chart or diagram showing its important components and some relationships among these components."

"It is not surprising that the organization chart is a frustrating instrument when used for other purposes, or when the chart is drawn to conform to some executive's ideal rather than to the observable facts of organizational life."

"In some firms role relationships prescribed by the chart seemed to be of secondary importance to personal relationships between individuals."

"Since the concentric organization chart has neither top nor bottom, the interpretations of the relationships existing within the organization are not dependent upon the position of the diagram which represents them. Any organization chart is designed to present certain facts about a given organization at given time. These facts or relationships do not depend on viewing the organization from any particular angle or any specific position, which is also the case for the concentric organization chart. However, with the traditional organization chart, the relationships which it intends to portray can be interpreted properly only when the chart is presented to the viewer in a certain position, that is, with the top at the top and the bottom at the bottom. Should this not be done, the organization should be upside down Should this not be done, the organization would be upside down, with relationships existing inversely to the facts of the organizational structure."

"We have already seen that rank in business is, at best, a shaky thing and that the organization chart is a poor device for showing it."

"Asked to state the reasons that led them to develop organization charts, the 118 firms gave answers that may be grouped in two classes... One group of responses deals with charting for the purpose of informing employees and outsiders on the nature of an organization structure. The second class of reasons for charting concerns the discovery and cure of organization defects. Many companies, naturally, find themselves using the charting process for both kinds of activity, even though they may have started out with communication as the primary objective. The author found, in many interviews with company executives..., that a firm may start out solely with the idea of developing a graphic representation of the organization for purposes of communication. Before long, however—in the process of setting the organization down on paper—conflicts, duplications, and burdensome spans of control become apparent. The first penciled sketch of the organization may cause astonishment in top management circles. The reaction is often surprise that so many previously undetected weaknesses exist."

"It is probable that one day we shall begin to draw organization charts as a series of linked groups rather than as a hierarchical structure of individual "reporting" relationships."

"An organization chart is a graphic presentation of the arrangement and interrelationships of the subdivisions and functions of an organization as it exists."

"How many people, if asked, could tell you exactly where they fit in, and exactly what their duties, authority, and relationships are with every other member in their organization? If an answer could be given at all, it would require much thought and debate. So, it is difficult to visualize an organization in its entirety, and to clearly picture just where an individual stands in it. Because such difficulties exist for an individual, consider the situation in which top level management finds itself when confronted with the same question. And because necessity is the mother of invention, a tool for management has been invented to enable the manager to quickly locate who is responsible for what, and why. This tool we call the organization chart. It is but one of the tools of management."

"The formal administrative design can never adequately or fully reflect the concrete organization to which it refers, for the obvious reason that no abstract plan or pattern can—or may, if it is to be useful—exhaustively describe an empirical totality. At the same time, that which is not included in the abstract design (as reflected, for example, in a a staff and-line organization chart) is vitally relevant to the maintenance and development of the formal system itself."

"The purposes of functional charts is"

"Comparatively few of the companies surveyed have comprehensive company organization charts, graphically portraying their plans of organization. Even some of the largest companies, with world-wide operations and many subsidiaries, have no organization charts to facilitate proper understanding and study of their organization arrangements. This condition is apparently due to lack of appreciation of the need and value of such charts, reluctance to indicate relative ranking of executive positions which might give rise to dissention, or lack of staff assistants experienced in making simple, effective charts. The companies which do have comprehensive organization charts appear to have the soundest organization plans/ Furthermore, in the course of preparing charts for the companies that did not have them, many obvious organization weaknesses were brought to light which would not be readily apparent except through the charting process. It is therefore felt that a good organization chart for the company as a whole, with a break-down chart for each major division, is an essential first step in the analysis, clarification, and understanding of any organization plan. In some companies organization charts are held very closely, only a few top executives being permitted to see them. In other companies all staff and supervisory employees are given copies of the general organization charts and a comprehensive explanation of the whole plan of organization..."

"The Hawthorne researchers became more and more interested in the informal employee groups which tend to form within the formal organisation of the Company, and which are not likely to be represented in the organisation chart."

"Because any arrangement of squares, circles, and connecting lines has limitations in what it may portray, the organization chart is best regarded as an illustration accompanying a description of the departments, boards, bureaus..."

"Peirce (1932: 2.278) distinguishes two kinds of icons: pictures and diagrams, the latter of which he illustrates with the example of an electrical wiring diagram in relation to the wiring itself. But the difference between a picture and a diagram, as Peirce himself notes, is relative. The picture always abstracts from some features of the object it portrays, e.g., three-dimensionality in painting. The diagram is simply more abstract. The difference, then, is one of degree and not of kind."

"To show this diagram properly, I would really need a four dimensional screen. However, because of government cuts, we could manage to provide only a two dimensional screen."

"Steve Mellor and I independently came up with a characterization of the three modes in which people use the UML: sketch, blueprint, and programming language. By far the most common of the three, at least to my biased eye, is UML as sketch. In this usage, developers use the UML to help communicate some aspects of a system. As with blueprints, you can use sketches in a forward-engineering or reverse-engineering direction. Forward engineering draws a UML diagram before you write code, while reverse engineering builds a UML diagram from existing code in order to help understand it."

"A diagram is a graphic shorthand. Though it is an ideogram, it is not necessarily an abstraction. It is a representation of something in that it is not the thing itself. In this sense, it cannot help but be embodied. It can never be free of value or meaning, even when it attempts to express relationships of formation and their processes. At the same time, a diagram is neither a structure nor an abstraction of structure."

"Schematic diagrams are more abstract than pictorial drawings, showing symbolic elements and their interconnection to make clear the configuration and/or operation of a system."

"How could one argue with a man who was always drawing lines and circles to explain the position; who, one day, drew a diagram [here Michael illustrated with pen and paper] saying 'take a point A, draw a straight line to point B, now three-fourths of the way up the line take a point C. The straight line AB is the road to the Republic; C is where we have got to along the road, we canot move any further along the straight road to our goal B; take a point out there, D [off the line AB]. Now if we bend the line a bit from C to D then we can bend it a little further, to another point E and if we can bend it to CE that will get us around Cathal Brugha which is what we want!' How could you talk to a man like that?"

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence..."

"I have always believed that all Members of this House should be sufficiently articulate to express what they want to say without diagrams."

"He was the kind of man who kept a diagram showing where you sat when you dined with him and what you ate, lest he serve you the same dish when you came again."

"One day I went alone to the river to enjoy myself as usual. When I was a short distance from the masonry, however, I was horrified to observe that the water had risen and was carrying me along swiftly.… The pressure against my chest was great and I was barely able to keep my head above the surface.… Slowly and gradually I became exhausted and unable to withstand the strain longer. Just as I was about to let go, to be dashed against the rocks below, I saw in a flash of light a familiar diagram illustrating the hydraulic principle that the pressure of a fluid in motion is proportionate to the area exposed and automatically I turned on my left side. As if by magic, the pressure was reduced."

"The government are very keen on amassing statistics. They collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But you must never forget that every one of these figures comes in the first instance from the chowty dar [chowkidar] (village watchman in India), who just puts down what he damn pleases."

"A diagram, indeed, so far as it has a general signification, is not a pure icon; but in the middle part of our reasonings we forget that abstractness in great measure, and the diagram is for us the very thing."

"Many different types of pictorial representations are used in instruction. On a scale of very concrete to very abstract, first comes the photograph. Next are true-to-life drawings which lose some detail compared to the photograph. Diagrams are more abstract, but generally depict recognizable objects and preserve spatial relationships. Lastly graphs and plots are completely abstract representations of sets of data."

"I've had enough of breakdowns and diagrams — judging from picture books, apparently Heaven is a partly cloudy place."

"I devoted several months in privacy to the composition of a treatise on the mysteries of Three Dimensions. Only, with the view of evading the Law, if possible, I spoke not of a physical Dimension, but of a Thoughtland whence, in theory, a Figure could look down upon Flatland and see simultaneously the insides of all things, and where it was possible that there might be supposed to exist a Figure environed, as it were, with six Squares, and containing eight terminal Points. But in writing this book I found myself sadly hampered by the impossibility of drawing such diagrams as were necessary for my purpose..."

"God desires to indwell in my whole and total heart and cannot in any way tolerate my having an image in my mind's eye."

"However the development proceeds in detail, the path so far traced by the quantum theory indicates that an understanding of those still unclarified features of atomic physics can only be acquired by foregoing visualization and objectification to an extent greater than that customary hitherto..."

"When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity — that was a quality God's image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination."

"To understand animal thinking you've got to get away from a language. See my mind works like Google for images. You put in a key word; it brings up pictures. See language for me narrates the pictures in my mind. When I work on designing livestock equipment I can test run that equipment in my head like 3-D virtual reality. In fact, when I was in college I used to think that everybody was able to do that. And language just sort of, you know, gives an opinion. Like, oh, that's a good idea or oh, I just figured out how to design that."

"No man can visualize four dimensions, except mathematically … I think in four dimensions, but only abstractly. The human mind can picture these dimensions no more than it can envisage electricity. Nevertheless, they are no less real than electro-magnetism, the force which controls our universe, within, and by which we have our being."

"Our intellectual powers are rather geared to master static relations and that our powers to visualize processes evolving in time are relatively poorly developed. For that reason we should do (as wise programmers aware of our limitations) our utmost to shorten the conceptual gap between the static program and the dynamic process, to make the correspondence between the program (spread out in text space) and the process (spread out in time) as trivial as possible."

"Since geometry is the right foundation of all painting, I have decided to teach its rudiments and principles to all youngsters eager for art."

"While the film Life of Christ was rolling past before my eyes I was mentally visualizing the gods, Shri Krishna, Shri Ramachandra their Gokul and Ayodhya.. I was gripped by a strange spell. I bought another ticket and saw the film again. This time I felt my imagination taking shape in the screen. Could this really happen? Could we the sons of India, ever be able to see Indian images on the screen. The whole night passed in this mental agony."

"Only damaged people want good things to happen to them through visualization. They want something for nothing."