Life in a Matrix

The final part of our big picture of the issues we see working and leading in complex and matrixed organizations is the area of Community.

Building community in large organizations has become much more difficult and expensive. We are in multiple locations and time zones, we are more diverse and have less time to build and maintain relationships.

At the same time trust is essential to effective cooperation and we need to be able to cooperate faster and more effectively. If we fail to do this, a lack of trust can cause problems with the other Cs - cooperation, communication and particularly with control - if I don’t trust you I will tend to increase central control.

We don’t think you build community by inviting people to sleep through PowerPoint presentations at “networking meetings”or by imposing corporate values that work against the diversity we work so hard to attract. We do think there are simpler forms of community that can work well and some clear shared practices that allow people to build effective open communities fast.

You can read more about this in the final 2 chapters of Speed Lead.

How do you build effective communities in this fast paced, distributed and diverse world?