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.

One useful question for clarifying structure is to ask whether an issue to be decided relates to “doing the right thing” or to “doing things right.” Some issues associated with “doing the right thing” relate to defining what is to be done, by when something must be done, and why it must be done, to name a few. Issues associated with “doing things right” include, among others, defining how something is to be done and by whom.

When employees are confused as to whom they should turn about what issue, we have a structure that needs clarification. Failure to clarify these relationships adequately results in frustration and lost productivity—schoolyard-style shoving matches, people making up their own rules, and expanding or contracting their own roles on a freelance basis. Once key issues of doing things right and doing the right things have been explicated fully, we can, if we wish, then attach a shorthand description. Call it solid line or dotted line, call it vertical or horizontal, but make sure that whatever you call it has real clarity of meaning behind it—news that the employees can use.

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!

Designing a matrix management structure is not a “one size fits all” proposition.  The key issues that emerge when moving to a matrix structure surround a thirst for clarity at every level of the organization. Employees want to know: “What am I supposed to do differently?”; “How does an arrangement where I report to more than one boss actually work?” Leadership wants to know what it can do to usher the new structure into place – with minimal resistance and maximum speed and success. There are roles, rules and tools that make a matrix structure work successfully. These need to be designed systematically and with all due diligence if matrix management success is to be achieved.

Strategic Futures helps clients in the formative stages of matrix management by framing the 18 key decisions that need to be made, emphatically steering the client away from known perils – towards successful, proven practices.

Here’s the thing: These 18 formative decisions are largely invisible to organizations setting out on the matrix management journey. The good news is that key decisions are known to Strategic Futures because of our work with dozens and dozens of clients in a full spectrum of industries over many years. Explicit and conscious decision-making concerning these key issues saves our clients time, money, and frustration in very significant ways. No amount of recasting matrix management as “the new matrix” or “the blended matrix” or other such new-and-improved spins will exempt you from making these critical decisions. 

There’s more good news: Decision outputs can then be imported into future briefings and training for staff that builds employee understanding and confidence in accomplishing great things using an agile matrix structure that makes the highest-and-best use of all available talent.  You don’t want to be in a position of telling management and staff that “we’ll get back to you on that,” or “we hadn’t thought about that, we’ll have to think about this.”

No one has all the answers all of the time, but a failure to think ahead should be an episodic event, rather than a chronic condition.

That’s where we come in.

When it comes to designing and implementing a fully successful matrix organization, the old adage of “in for a dime, in for a dollar” comes to mind. Changes in organizational structure are not to be taken lightly.  Structural changes have enormous consequences for organizations and the people who labor in them. Everyone has the same question, “what am I supposed to do differently?” Answering this question in a definitive way that mines the considerable benefits of matrix management – and builds both competence and confidence –  takes time and deliberate effort. 

Implementation of structural change cannot nor need not take forever.  Indeed, the more systematic your approach to making these changes, the better off you will be. Progress can be and should be rapid. As our articles, Matrix Management: Method, Not Magic and Five Not-So-Easy Pieces of Matrix Management explain in more detail, effective matrix management requires planning, clarification of roles, and supportive training for standing up the matrix organization and occasionally refreshing employees at all levels as to roles, rules, tools, and the winning behaviors required for success.

A “launch-and-abandon” approach to designing, implementing or even refining your matrix organization is a formula for disappointment. Planning, persistence and follow-through are essential. By launch and abandon, we mean any major initiative announced by senior management and then left to its own devices with little or no additional investment or reinforcement.

These are hyper times. These are difficult times. Everywhere I look, I see employees striving harder than ever before to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Employees are energized, gravitating rapidly in synch with the direction that the organization seems to be moving – with the speed akin to moths moving towards a new light source.

Given the environment in which we find ourselves, it becomes all the more critical that our decisions and actions – particularly those related to structure – be sure-footed and first-time-final.  While some might argue that flavors of the month were affordable during those Halcyon days of greater resource abundance, there can be little doubt that such dalliances are no longer affordable today.

If you are in pursuit of the considerable benefits that matrix management can provide, e.g., better goal focus, customer focus, improved capacity utilization, synergy, organizational creativity and the like, then you are definitely “in for a dime, in for a dollar.”

If you are in the mood for a flavor of the month, matrix management is not the right flavor for you.