Less is more - especially when it comes to arrows

A friend of mine recently gave me a rough draft version of a diagram she was working on. Here's the diagram:

Not bad - in fact better than most finished diagrams produced by many organisations. My first impression was of lots of arrows with different 'heaviness'. I was keen to reduce the number of arrows. My friend told me the diagram was intended to convey a hierarchy - Strategy at the top all the way through to Improvement. I was also concerned that 'New Service Initiatives' and 'Legacy Service' had several symbols with connecting arrows. So working on the 'Less is more' principle I came up with this:

I reduced the number of arrows by using chevrons and maintained the hierarchy. Concepts such as 'legacy service' now have only one symbol. I also addressed diagram hygiene by adding a legend and metadata such as author and version number.