Understanding organizational hierarchy
We briefly covered this in the Chapter 1, Consultant - An Introduction. Let’s look at why this can be a make or break situation for a consultant. A consultant needs to work with several functions in an organization. Every organization will have a hierarchy for each of these functions. A hierarchy is a structure in an organization where each level has a different role and responsibility. The hierarchy often reflects the different decision-making structures. The following is an example of the Sales hierarchy for a Multi-National Company (MNC):

Sales hierarchy for a MNC
If we look at preceding figure, it shows the Sales hierarchy for a large MNC. Though self-explanatory, we will try to cover in brief the different people involved. The structure is partial as it only covers America. The others, Europe and Asia, will also have similar hierarchies. The following is a brief explanation of the hierarchy:
- Global Sales Head: He/she looks at the entire organization...