How far down the ladder is the intranet manager?

As you saw from my previous post, raising senior management awareness of the role of the intranet is a key priority for lots of enterprises.
In preparation for this year's Global Intranet Strategies survey, I did some preliminary pre-survey research with the members of the NetJMC & Co Linkedin group of intranet managers and asked them where they were placed in their organizations.

How far from the top of your organization is the first fulltime intranet person or team? In other words, how many levels under the CEO or top position?

"3 levels down from the CEO" was the most frequent response.
In my calculations to get this figure, I considered the CEO to be level 0, then counted down using the information in the answers. A number of people shared the reporting line in detail.
A couple people responded saying 2 levels down, saying that their manager reports directly to the CEO. Several more ranged from 4 to 6 levels down, but the majority were at 3.

Of course the interpretation of this depends on how hierarchical or flat the organization is. Three levels under the CEO may be quite high, or not very high at all!

I will nuance this question in the survey itself by asking participants to tell us how many levels exist in their organization, then at what level the first fulltime intranet person or team is placed.

Question to the readers of this blog, especially those who work in large organizations:
Do you actually know how many hierarchical levels exist in your enterprise? Is this a question that is relatively easy to answer?

Comments

[Philippe]

Hello Jane,
I think that, in big organization, its quite difficult to respond to this question, because of affiliates, hierarchy complexity...
Maybe we can give you an estimation (ex : between 15 and 20 levels), but I'm not sure.
If you cannot collect this information, you should at least take into account the size of organization (ex : number of employees), because in wide structures, its not possible to have all important subjects (like intranet is) attached directly to the CEO.

[Jane McConnell]

Hi Philippe,
Yes, size is a possible criteria.
In my informal research, the 2 highest intranet managers reported to a person who reported to the CEO.
Many reported several layers up: for example, one intranet manager whose level was assistant director, reported to a director, who reported to a VP, who reported to another VP who then reported to the COO, who reported to the CEO. I counted that one as "level 5 under the CEO".

Would you say that people are more likely to know how far "under" the CEO than how high up they are in the overall organizational structure?