Why does your matrix exist? What is its overall intent? A clear Intent enables distributed decisions to align around a common purpose while enabling agility in the face of change and uncertainty. Intent Desired Outcome: Aligned decisions The four enablers of effective matrix decisions are: Intent, Governance, Culture, and Process. Ideally, they would be attended to as the matrix is being developed, but the decision engineering framework can be useful at any time. Matrix leaders (decision engineers) need to concentrate their attention on four enablers of effective matrix decisions. This is the best piece of matrix management advice you’ll ever have: “People can have more than one boss, but decisions can’t.” Effective decision making in a matrix must be engineered it cannot be left to chance. A matrix cannot be effective unless there is clarity of decision roles and rights. The vulnerability point of a matrix is most often decision making. I’m sure you know the term Achilles’ heel – an individual or organisational vulnerability that can lead to a downfall despite its overall strength. New forms of agile organisation have been proposed such as Holacracy, Adhocrachy, and Wirearchy, but before leaping into another structural solution it might be worth examining the matrix in more depth. Unfortunately, matrix organisations can be as slow and unresponsive as a traditional hierarchy with its unity of command structure. Enter the matrix organisation with its mix of horizontal and vertical lines of authority and responsibility. A rigid unity of command structure slows down organisational responsiveness to change, and so organisations have sought to nurture the ‘agility of command’. Since the middle of the 20th century, however, globalisation and the digital revolution have generated much higher levels of turbulence. In a stable, relatively unchanging environment, that principle was highly functional. Anyone who currently works in a matrix organisation – or has done so in the past – is very familiar with what I call matrix mud – the ambiguity and confusion about the who’s, what’s, when’s, how’s, and why’s.Ī key principle of management for a century or more has been ‘unity of command’ – an employee should only report to one boss otherwise there will be disorder.
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