Organization Structure & Reporting Lines

This document explains how TechAbout is organised: who reports to whom, how authority flows from the Board down to teams, and how to find your manager and the owner of any given decision. It is for every employee and leader, and it is public — clients and candidates may read it too.

How to Read the Structure

TechAbout is governed by a clear line of accountability that runs from the Founder & Board, through the CEO, into the C-suite, and out to the departments and teams that do the work. Each layer answers to the one above it and is trusted to run the one below it.

• Founder & Board — sets direction, guards the mission and the company's long-term interests, and holds the CEO accountable. The Board owns big-ticket decisions: strategy, major spend, and senior appointments.
• CEO — the single point of accountability to the Board for the whole company. The CEO turns strategy into an operating plan and holds the C-suite accountable for it.
• C-suite — the executives who each own a function end to end: the COO (operations & delivery), CFO (finance), CTO (engineering, product platform & security), CPO (people), and CMO (marketing, brand & growth).
• Departments & teams — where the work happens: web design & development, SEO, link building & guest posts, cybersecurity, graphic & brand design, the Express marketplace, and the internet-domain & digital-asset portfolio, alongside HR/People, recruiting/ATS, finance, and IT/admin.

Reporting Lines & Span of Control

Your solid-line manager is the person responsible for your goals, your appraisal, your priorities, and your day-to-day support. Everyone has exactly one solid-line manager. If you are unsure who yours is, it is the person who runs your one-to-ones and signs off your objectives — and it is listed against your record in ERPNext. How that manager reviews your work is covered in the Performance Appraisal policy.

Span of control is simply how many people report directly to one manager. We keep spans deliberate: wide enough that decisions are not bottlenecked, narrow enough that every person gets real attention and feedback. As a team grows, we split it and add a lead rather than letting any one manager stretch thin.

Dotted-Line Relationships

Not every working relationship is a reporting one. A dotted line means you take functional direction or standards from someone who is not your solid-line manager.

• A designer embedded on a client project takes day-to-day tasking from the project lead (dotted line) while their appraisal and career growth stay with their design manager (solid line).
• Security standards set by the CTO's function apply across every team, even though those teams do not report to the CTO.

The rule of thumb: solid line owns your development and rating; dotted line owns a specific piece of work or a company-wide standard. When the two conflict, raise it early with your solid-line manager rather than guessing. If it cannot be resolved at that level, follow the Grievance & Complaint Escalation path.

One Person, Several Hats

TechAbout is a small company that is scaling, so one person may currently hold more than one role — a lead might also carry a C-suite mandate, or one manager may cover two related teams until each is large enough to stand on its own.

The role is permanent even when the person is temporary. We staff functions, not job titles.

This is a feature of our stage, not an accident. Every function on the chart has a named owner — the role accountable for it — even if that owner also owns something else today. As we grow, hats come off one at a time and each function gets its own dedicated leader.

Finding Who Owns What

• Your manager and reporting line live on your employee record in ERPNext; the org chart above shows the overall shape.
• The owner of a function is the C-suite role over it on the chart — read the individual charters in this book for each role's mandate, decision rights, and boundaries.
• A decision that seems to sit between two teams should go to the nearest shared manager above both. When in doubt, escalate up one level rather than sideways.
• For anything about structure, reporting, or who owns a role, ask People directly.

Questions? Contact hr@techabout.com.