Life in a Matrix

[Read more →]

Regular business travel is rarely the glamorous experience that non-travellers imagine. Many of us have returned from a sweaty, delayed, frustrating trip to work long hours and go for dinner with strangers to hear our colleagues say “Oh you went to Berlin – how lovely”.
But in recent years and months a combination of intrusive  security, [...]

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

We will be exhibiting at the 2009 SHRM Annual Conference & Exposition at the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans from 28th June to 1st July.
If you would like to meet Kevan Hall, author of Speed Lead and the Life in a Matrix blog or other members of the Global Integration US team Tim Mitchell, [...]

[Read more →]

One of the common problems we see in our matrix management training and consulting is that matrix management is taken too far down the organization.

We worked with a financial services organization last year who wanted to implement matrix management in an organization of 1500 people. By the time we had identified the people who had [...]

[Read more →]

We are getting a lot of searches coming to the blog looking for a matrix management presentation.  Several are browsing the catogiries but not finding the specific materials that may be of most help in building a matrix management presentation.
Have a look at the matrix management presentation on our sister site Global Integration. It covers [...]

[Read more →]

One of the key reasons that companies introduce a matrix organization structure is to break down the traditional vertical “silos” that characterised past, less integrated organizations.
But the legacy systems, relationships and rewards often get in the way of developing matrix and virtual teams that cut across these silos.
In the early days of matrix and virtual [...]

[Read more →]

Regular readers will know that our research shows a drift towards increasing central control in many matrix organizations and also that matrix organizations require decentralized control to function.
There are many small factors that subtly undermine trust in matrix organizations – distance, cultures, timezones and communicating through technology can all create or magnify misunderstanding and many [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

A matrix organization structure solves nothing. It is just a reflection of internal and external complexity. The matrix structure acknowledges that there are multiple and sometimes competing priorities and  shows them in the reporting structure of the organization.
Whether that structure succeeds or fails is dependent on matrix management – how well people work together in [...]

[Read more →]