I said what I meant and I meant what I said. The adoption of matrix management involves people assuming new roles and working these roles in a new configuration of relationships. It’s change…and change has no natural allies. My experience tells me that participants in the matrix organization must be “sold” not only on the benefits of matrix management but, most importantly, they must be able to visualize themselves achieving success as they play their new role, transacting business through relationships with others who are also playing matrix-altered roles. Visualization is powerful. Prior to buying a new automobile, we must be able to visualize ourselves driving that car. Similarly, as we adopt matrix management, people need to be able to visualize themselves achieving success using a different model than the one that has led to success in the past. Mixing metaphors, each player in the matrix organization must be able to visualize themselves driving that new role on a sunny day with the convertible top down.  If they harbor negative fantasies that they will be stuck on the side of the road with a broken-down jalopy in a rainstorm, we’re going to have a heck of a time changing roles, relationships and behavior consistent with the matrix model.

In summary, constructive expressions of resistance to organizational change should be welcomed within reason.  These conversations provide golden opportunities to explore the specific difficulties that an employee is having in visualizing herself as being successful in the new matrix-managed order. If there is no resistance whatsoever, you should be concerned unless you’re strolling in the graveyard by yourself. If you are abjectly dismissive of healthy resistance, you miss an opportunity to achieve breakthrough success.  The best approach is to explore useful questions and answer them in an authentic manner to achieve growth and change that benefits everyone.

As I concluded this important assignment, it occurred to me that this agency is engaged in “dynamic mentoring.” What’s dynamic about it? At least a half-dozen dimensions, but here are three:

First of all, it is dynamic in the sense that crime today is always changing, particularly crimes involving the abuse of technology and/or financial institutions and instruments. Some crimes are variations on old themes, but others are unprecedented. For that reason, the technical competencies developed through coaching efforts are always in motion just to keep up with the criminals who are becoming increasingly skilled in their R&D (research and development) exploits.

Second, the older, more established employees have insights and skills to contribute to the more recently hired. However, the younger employees bring “tricks of the trade” learned through their recent formal education and/or prior jobs. There’s something for everyone in this mentoring equation.

The third dynamism is that employee-centered mentoring and organization-centered coaching feed on one another in an interactive, synergistic manner. As the employee grows in understanding and competency, areas for mentoring attention that were once invisible become relevant and find their way onto the mentoring agenda.

The program involves structured visits to headquarters and to other agency locations.  Pair-ups of mentors with mentees are decided by senior management based on a variety of considerations. Rotational assignments to provide first-hand experience in, e.g., executing search warrants, etc. build both competence and confidence. 

In a world where employee development is given short shrift too often, it is exciting and encouraging to see things being done right!

Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) is a risk-based approach to managing an enterprise, whose ancestry reaches back several decades to include Statistical Process Control (SPC), quality circles, Total Quality Management (TQM), and ISO standards.  ERM adherents, like their TQM brethren before them, often make sweeping, potentially dangerous claims that ERM is your “silver bullet” – it’s all you need to manage successfully. (Manage, perhaps although not necessarily lead). A few decades ago, this school of thought preached similarly that “TQM is all you need.”  During the TQM heyday, Motorola was contemplating deeply its TQM navel; Motorola was educating other companies as to its TQM theology, when the digital revolution passed it by like a speeding train. Whoops! Drinking the kool-aid rather than thinking ahead, Motorola had some serious catching up to do. 

Successful organizations align and balance strategy, systems and structure around their mission and customers. ERM is an excellent tool and an essential “system” in the triad of strategy, systems and structure. However, systems alone do not a thriving organization make. Systems are not strategy although they may masquerade as such.

It’s no surprise that incessant focus on risk cultivates a deeply risk-averse culture and puts it on steroids, painting creativity and change into a narrow corner. Why is that?  A risk-averse culture requires complete certainty in all things, much the way government bureaucracies operate — slowly and uncompetitively.  Staff get the message that rewards and recognition are based solely on the degree to which risks were mitigated.  They behave accordingly. Creative visioning and bold strategic thinking become heretical in extreme cases. Ask yourself: How would Steve Jobs fare in a zealous ERM culture?  

Don’t get me wrong: ERM and related approaches are valuable tools when used as part of a balanced portfolio rather than as a silver bullet.  Risk-based and risk-averse thinking has its place and time, used best when balanced with a creative, opportunity-driven strategic thinking process. Unleash the strategic thinking process first and don’t hobble it unduly. Thereafter, develop and apply your ERM templates interactively to make strategic choices and establish accountable dashboards.

Strategic planning and ERM are not mutually exclusive; they should complement one another. You wouldn’t drive without a front windshield, nor without your rear-view mirror. You need both to navigate successfully particularly when traffic is thick, fast, and erratic, as it is in these turbulent times.

I met Chris in his capacity as a top executive at Sasakawa Africa Association when I was engaged to provide matrix management assistance. Just minutes after meeting him in Nairobi, I knew that I had met a friend for life. He connected with people on an immediate and deep level.  Some executives are more task-focused. Other executives are more people-focused. Chris was both task-focused and people-focused and he was a virtuoso in both areas. I have worked with powerful executives around the globe. One shared characteric of successful executives? They all look directly into your eyes, without fail. However, with Chris it was different. Chris looked into your eyes and you could see his inquiring mind at work: Who are you, really? How can I leverage your talents so that you can join me as a force for positive change? It was so very powerful. It was unique. It was all about his mission, not his ego.

I would return from Africa and comment to my friends about the after-hours conversations we would have. The sparkling and sophisticated conversations about world affairs were a cut above the conversations I enjoyed in New York or Washington.  Why? Chris brought the energy. He brought the sparkle. He was truly a man of the world. He made it all special, instant by instant. What’s more, he had assembled a unique group of people who were up to the task and added to the energy he brought. And the task was always grand, never trivial, never small bore.

Chris had enormous gravitas. He was a force for good. I don’t know how many Christopher Dowswells populate this globe of ours, but it’s plain that there aren’t enough of them. Chris was what genuine leadership is all about. May we all be inspired by him and may each of us become ever more powerful in improving the lives of others wherever we may be, whatever our walk of life. There’s no replacing Chris Dowswell, but those of us who knew him encumber a unique debt: we owe it to him to do our best to try. 

None of this should be cause for alarm.  In working with dozens of organization through the process of matrix management design and implementation, none were satisfied with their legacy systems and all of them initiated system changes or additions.  In other words, you are in good company in discovering that the new structure will need to be aligned with new systems, as well as with new strategies.  Indeed, you should be alarmed if you don’t perceive such a need.  The typical areas needing revamping relate to financial management, performance management, staff assignment, and staff competency tracking.

I won’t attempt to identify all of the techniques that you can use to achieve these results in this space. However, there is one critical technique which is surprisingly underused. Where have major fumbles and fizzles occurred in the past? What hand-offs have resulted in dissatisfaction between or among functions? Which fumbles and fizzles have delayed delivery of a product or service? Which interfaces have detracted from the attainment of team goals and objectives?

Bring your team together and take a little trip down “Memory Lane,” answering the questions posed above. Do a post-mortem on things that have gone wrong in the past and then develop a “watch list” for use by management and staff alike to ensure that they go right in the future. Create an inventory for surveillance and control. Simple? Obvious? Perhaps. However, you might be astonished by the number of organizations that don’t avail themselves of this simple technique for making their matrix teams work more smoothly; your organization may be among their number.

Try it. You’ll like it.

The terms mentoring and coaching are used by many as if they are interchangeable. Strictly speaking, they are not interchangeable. They are similar but different. Mentoring focuses primarily on the development of the individual, with secondary benefits for the organization. Coaching focuses primarily on the needs of the organization to ensure that an employee can perform tasks at an acceptable level of competency, with secondary benefits for the individual. As a matter of proper style and approach, mentors ask a lot of questions which require the mentee to think and learn. At the risk of over-generalization, coaches tend to be more prescriptive and directive in their approach than mentors.

That said, our mentoring training emphasizes that coaching is frequently an essential part of mentoring. What’s more, clients increasingly want a mix of mentoring and coaching so that the organization both ensures skills transfer and development between the mentor and the mentee as well as nurturing career futuring and robust employee self-development.

Figuring out the relative level of emphasis is essential to ensuring successful “Mentoring,” “Coaching,” or “Mentoring & Coaching” efforts in your organization. Clarify your terms, specify your goals, and you can design and launch a program that gets the most people on board with what you are seeking to do and how you are going about doing it. If concepts and intentions remain vague, you run the risk of ending up with a program that nobody likes

A key skill needed by participants in a strategic planning process is the ability to visualize and then verbalize an outcome end-state as a goal. Such a goal statement answers a question such as, “how will things be different three years from now?” What we seek in strategic planning is a freeze-frame still photo of an outcome from which we can do reverse engineering to identify the objectives and strategies that will be needed to take us from where we are now to where we want to be. Sounds straightforward enough, doesn’t it? I thought so too until one of my African participants, an extremely capable young executive who is fluent in several languages said, “Spelling out goals this way is one of the hardest things that I have ever done.”

Why was visualizing an end-state outcome so difficult? There are a variety of reasons, depending on the culture that shaped participant thinking. For example, Native Americans’ notion of time often differs from the straight-ahead linear model that is implanted in many of our beady brains. In other cultures, the idea of “freezing” an outcome at a particular point in time is especially foreign; in these instances, a “process video” or moving picture is as close as some participants can get to defining a future desired state. In other cases, the whole skill-set of mental “time travel” – taking us from how things are now to how they need to be — which underlies strategic thinking is especially foreign and difficult.

The bottom line is that the strategic planning facilitator needs to pay close attention to the fundamental perspectives and skills that are needed for effective plan development. Don’t assume that your cultural viewpoint is shared by everyone in the room. Take the extra time to ensure that everyone has the power tools and skills needed to visualize the future and describe it. As you do so, you will get as much or more than you give by way of cultural insights and new ways of looking at things. I can guarantee that it will be more than worth your while.