Life in a Matrix

Regular readers will know that we think there is too much cooperation going on - and this is the subject of the first episode of our new free podcast series
 
A subset of this is the seemingly overwhelming urge to share information.
 

 
How often on our conference calls do we experience a moment like the one […]

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As part of our Speed Lead “save a day a week” program we are focusing with some of our clients on specific reductions in meetings, conference calls and emails - for many people in matrix and other complex companies (and some simpler ones) this consumes 40-50% of their time and they tell us that over […]

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Good trip to Brussels this week to work with a virtual team at Coca-Cola.
One of the challenges we have seen in a complex matrix environment is how to get your message through the mass of interruptions and distractions at work. We think that there is too much poor quality communication to the extent that it is hard to […]

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Continuing our theme of communications overload and continuous partial attention in matrix (and other) organization, one of my colleagues in the UK  Phil Stockbridge, found an article in today’s Daily Mail on Email Time Bandits The research claims that people spend 4 hours per day on unnecessary emails, calls and gossip, that this costs UK industry […]

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In  a previous post on matrix management skills we talked about the importance of networking in getting things done in a matrix organization structure.
A useful tool in this area is network mapping where we get participants in our skills for the matrix training to draw their network and analyze it to identify gaps, strengths, weaknesses etc…
I know […]

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One of my colleagues, Dennis in LA spotted this article in the LA Times, Silicon Valley Meetings go topless, it is slightly less exciting than it sounds - its about the impact of banning laptops and other communications devices from meetings - sounds like a good idea to me.

It happens regularly in our consulting and training […]

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One of the challenges in matrix organization structures is how to get good performance management information when an individual has several “matrix managers”, often for short periods of time, and no one individual has the total picture of their performance.
I came across a fascinating idea on using tag clouds in performance management at the “Investigating Enterprise […]

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As we saw in the last post, constant interruptions are a fact of life in matrix organization structures. The pattern of attention when we are interrupted at work looks like this.

Remember that the impact of this is as bad as a 10 IQ point reduction - and some of us don’t have that much IQ […]

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Matrix organization structures with their high levels of connectedness, multiple stakeholders and tendency to over-control and over-communicate tend to create a “high interrruption” enviornment. This has a big impact on our effectiveness at work in the matrix. 
 
Academics have been studying the impact of interruption at work for several years. Here is a summary of what they have […]

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This cartoon is based on a real conversation I had with a matrix manager.
Companies set up a matrix organization structure in order to connect people across the traditional silos of functions and locations. We spend time and effort to get people to communicate more.
Unfortunately, once people get the message, there is often an explosion of communication on […]

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