Matrix Management and Career Advancement/ Job Search
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Matrix management-related developments are monitored closely here at Strategic Futures. One good source of information is Google Alerts, a resource one can access and subscribe to on www.google.com. Google Alert–Matrix Management is increasingly displaying job vacancies where the applicant is expected to have experience managing or working in a matrix environment.
Indeed, we can’t help but observe that more and more companies are moving to matrix management. There are significant employment and promotional opportunities available to those who can represent fairly that they are ready, willing, and able to work in a matrix structure.
A jobseeker or someone looking for career advancement may have the requisite technical skills for a job vacancy but may lament that s/he doesn’t possess extensive matrix management experience–or perhaps none at all. What to do?
First, let’s consider that you may well have relevant experience and not know that you do. Have you worked on a cross-functional team where you were collaborating with people drawn from disciplines other than your own? This may have been in pursuit of a specific goal, performance of a specific project, or the satisfaction of a particular customer’s requirements. If so, you are part of the way there. Have you worked successfully on multiple projects at once? If so, this is something to emphasize!
Cross-functional collaboration is at the heart of any well-designed and managed matrix organization. Seeking out the productivity- and profit-building synergies that are expected from such collaboration is the strategic companion to the matrix structure. If you are able to talk about your contributions to results achieved from such cross-functional effort, you already have your foot in the door.
On the other hand and as you might expect, there’s more to it than that. When multiple cross-functional teams pursue shared objectives using shared resources, things get a bit more complicated and your ability to work through and with these complications is what the employer is seeking. There are specific roles that are played by participants in the matrix structure. There are also rules and tools that you need to know.
One way to get over this employment screening hurdle is to indicate that you have worked on cross-functional teams (if you have) and/or on multiple projects at once, and also to indicate that you have familiarized yourself with the structure and dynamics of a matrix organization by reading pertinent literature. You might want to order one or two of our booklets, namely Life in the Matrix and also Matrix Stations. Better yet, you may want to order my book, Matrix Management Success: Method Not Magic. Chances are if you read the booklets and/or the book as well as reviewing the articles in our Library such as Matrix Management: Method, Not Magic and our matrix management blogs, you’ll know as much as the person who is reviewing your resume and interviewing you. Indeed, if you read the book, odds are you’ll be more knowledgeable about matrix management than the person who is scrutinizing your application for employment.
Good luck in your quest!
Matrix Gold: Mining for Synergy in Cross-Functional Teams
Cross-functional teams operating in a matrix-managed environment can deliver enormous synergy across participating disciplines which results in many significant benefits. This is true not only in R&D organizations but also in a wider, more diverse set of enterprises, such as engineering and construction management, government and more.
Benefits resulting from achieving valuable synergy include but are not limited to:
- Greater efficiency and productivity. Essentially there are golden possibilities for eliminating rework because each discipline learns to anticipate the needs and preferences of another discipline for the work that is being delivered to the other
- Discovery Breakthroughs. Much of what constitutes “discovery” in almost any field of endeavor represents a reconfiguration of components that existed previously but had not been assembled together in a particular way. When disciplines have the opportunity to mix and match their work products together in novel ways, discovery breakthroughs can result. The hastening of such breakthroughs is best accomplished by those who are closest to the work, laboring together in a cross-functional team setting.
- Widening of Comfort Zones. When members of different disciplines work closely together, organizational defense mechanisms are disarmed as trust builds. This widens comfort zones and builds esprit de corps—esprit de corps that has immediately usefulness, but which also expands future agility. Experienced team members who have participated previously in cross-functional efforts that have shattered barriers can be reconfigured for new projects or purposes with learning curves that are less steep. These team members will also evidence diminished resistance to change as new teams go through the stages of team development, e.g., form-storm- norm-perform.
In addition to lateral, cross-functional benefits, there are also important benefits for each of the participating vertical functions. One of these benefits is what I call “disease control,” meaning that a functional problem that is being evidenced on one cross-functional team may also be apparent on one or more other functional teams. Early knowledge of such problems permits the function to either fix or prevent the difficulty systemwide. Another benefit relates to priority-setting, where a helicopter view of all matrix teams’ needs for the services of a particular function permits proper allocation of available resources. This helicopter view also permits the discipline to identify and develop its future capabilities consistent with a clear-eyed view of emerging needs and team preferences.
Synergy is golden and the employee with a synergistic mindset is more valuable than an employee who lacks synergistic skills and behaviors. Success in mining for gold presupposes that you know where to look. This blog entry isn’t the full “treasure map” but I hope that it sends you off towards True North.
BIG Trouble: The Dual-Hatted Role in a Matrix Organization
What about the "dual-hatted role" in a matrix organization? This is a situation where a professional is assigned both vertical leadership as well as horizontal leadership responsibilities.
Short answer, bad idea.
It may be used on a very brief and temporary basis because of a talent shortage provided that thorough justification has been provided. In those instances where a dual-hatted role is approved for temporary use, it must be with the provision that another individual will be cultivated quickly to assume one of the two roles. Exceptions could be a short-term project, a truly extraordinary financial or geographic constraint, or a discipline specialty so rare that it would be folly to invest in developing bench strength in that particular functional subspecialty.
Why does all this matter?
- Potential confusion. Staff and management get confused about the exact role that the dual-hatted individual playing: Is s/he making a decision based on project or goal imperatives or on the basis of functional perspective? In extreme cases, this can escalate into staff confusion about whether the company is serious about implementing matrix management or whether it is reverting to its old pre-matrix ways.
- Dilution of synergy. Project Managers need to maximize synergy among functions to execute the project. Gaining and exercising a multi-disciplinary perspective is critical to success, but if we embed the Project Manager further into his/her native discipline in the dual-hatted capacity; we weaken cultivation of a seamless, synergistic project management viewpoint.
- Fear of loss of status. One source of resistance to matrix management is the sensation of a loss of status, power, and control to which some managers may cling. They once made all decisions—horizontal and vertical—relative to their work and employees. Now they must collaborate and consult with others. This is real change; it takes them out of their legacy comfort zones. Some will seek escape routes wherever they can find or invent them. These managers are actually gaining power in the matrix organization but it takes a while for them to figure that out. Top management enforcement of new matrix roles is critical to reaching the tipping point of real change and releasing the real power of the modern matrix organization.
Even worse, the dual-hatted role can sometimes degenerate into a proposition where some individuals are granted special license to live by the roles and rules of the pre-matrix organization, to some extent exempt from the overarching matrix proposition of "pursuing shared objectives using shared resources." If such arrangements catch fire, you can bet real money that the impetus to get designated as a "dual-hatted" player will snowball as a new indices of status and power. Next thing you know., you’ll have more and more people clamoring to return to the comfortable roles and patterns of the pre-matrix past, traveling under the canopy of the dual-hatted role. If enough of this happens, you’ll be left dealing with the unfortunate question of "when is a matrix not a matrix?" or otherwise finding yourself agreeing with the French that "the more things change, the more they remain the same."
Bottom line, avoid the "dual-hatted role" at all costs. It’s nothing but trouble.
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