Matrix Management Fumbles, Fizzles and Foibles
Cross-functional teams pass the baton of work-in-progress back and forth across functions with regularity. Hopefully, they do it with synergy and in a way that avoids fumbles and fizzles that require rework. In addition, such avoidance of rework and achieving the benefits of synergy should be enjoyed at the working level. Such are the principles of horizontal alignment in a matrix organization.
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.
Solid Line/Dotted Line: Is that ‘Nuff Said?
Matrix organizations are sometimes described in terms of solid line and dotted line relationships. The solid line/dotted line terminology can be useful shorthand, but only after the more tedious work of clarifying the structure in more precise detail has been done. Glib and lofty descriptions of matrix management as arrangements of “sharing staff” or “dotted-line” relationships are elegant at the intellectual level. Descriptions that are more gritty and granular are needed for folks who work in the matrix structure everyday and use it to get decisions made and work done.
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 and Organizational Dexterity: Method, Not Magic
Matrix management provides a pathway to organizational dexterity. Why does that matter? In 2010, IBM conducted its Global CEO Study. More than 1500 CEOs in 60 countries and 33 industries expressed concerns about massive and rapid change, global economic shifts, and the disruptive impacts of technology. 80% of the CEOs expect that the environment will become even more turbulent than it already is. More than half of the CEOs believe that their organizations are not prepared to cope by way of strategy, systems, and/or structure. The biggest needs they identified were for organizational dexterity, creativity, and closeness to customers.
At the risk of understatement, traditional silos and hierarchies are not known for their contribution to organizational dexterity. Far from it, these hierarchies are too often calcified in place, leaving few if any degrees of freedom. What’s more, in the worst cases, the hierarchy has been known to stifle creativity as well as create a moat which separates the enterprise from its customers—be they internal and/or external customers.
One example comes to mind: The client practices business-to-business selling of over-the-counter medications to drug and grocery stores. It once sold these products on a silo’d basis—one representative selling one particular type of medication. Sales reps from the same company but representing different products kept bumping into one another at the stores to which they were selling. This was wasted time and energy, accompanied by customer frustration with the picket fence offerings of the company. Also, it did not provide the drug company with the dexterity needed to anticipate customer needs using a comprehensive approach to the customer. The transformation to selling by customer-focused matrix teams meant greater closeness to customers, greater dexterity, and greater cross-selling creativity—the biggest needs identified by the CEOs in the IBM study!
When we unleash the power of a battery of cross-functional teams, which are pursuing shared objectives using shared resources, we can enjoy new vistas in organizational dexterity, provided that our design is sound, our roles are clear, are processes are defined, and we are nurturing a shared fate culture. In addition to all of this, our people must be trained in how to apply matrix management roles, rules and tools, and how to get the most and best of what it has to offer.
You can use matrix management to increase your organizational dexterity if you design and implement your matrix consciously and deliberately. As we say at Strategic Futures, during the course of our matrix management consulting, use method, not magic.
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