The Matrix (English)

“The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to
blind you from the truth.“


Morpheus, The Matrix


 


Matrix organizations are nothing but a compromise. That fact goes
undisputed for decades. Thus it should be needless writing about
the matrix after all. But truth is: the compromise has assumed a
life of his own. By now the matrix has transcended the second
dimension.  In order to describe the various reporting and
information relations, solid and dotted lines do not suffice any
longer. Colours are needed to visualize the design of the
different interactions. Organization charts look like subway maps
of metropolitan cities. In parallel, project organizations,
taskforces and ad hoc initiatives sprawl amongst the actual
organizations’ roots.


 
Long live the matrix

 


The „Global Head of Digital Customer Interaction“ is, amongst
other things and at the same time, responsible for sales in
Southern Europe as well as member of the “I-Tribe” that should
drive innovation across functions and countries. In his capacity
as “Global Head”, the “Regional Heads” of course report to him
whilst he is somehow responsible vis-à-vis the “Chief Digital
Officer” as well as – somehow – the “Chief Marketing Officer”,
both “global”. In his capacity as regional sales officer, he
directly reports to the local CEO but is indirectly also
interfacing with the “Global Sales Officer” whilst the “Chief
Sales Officers” of the regions countries report into him, at
least “dotted line”. The “I-Tribe”, finally, is self-organizing
but on a monthly basis reports to a steering committee whose main
constituents are the “Global Chief Innovation Officer”, the CEO
himself, the “Chief Digital Officer” and the COO (global). A
group of local executives serves as a sounding board for the
tribe’s activities.


The example can be extended on end. – And maybe get closer to
reality this way. Even bigger the confusion gets on the levels
below. True clarity seems to be only with the CEO who undoubtedly
carries responsibility for the whole thing. Let’s not ignore the
advantages of such a setup. In addition to impressive job titles
in social networks, it leads to comfortable dilution of
responsibilities. How would you weigh the conceptual progress in
the realm of “Digital Customer Interaction” against sales figures
in Southern Europe? And isn’t the contribution to cross country
collaboration way more important in the long term? After all: Who
assesses success and contribution to this success in the end?
Failure doesn’t occur in these constructs anyway.


As a corollary from this dilution of responsibilities in the
ocean of corporate structures we can directly conclude that form
and results lose their balance. The “successful” steering
committee presentation in the i-tribe is possibly more important
for your career development than sustainable sales success in the
region. No wonder that  the very consultants that prepare
these presentations are continuously gaining influence.


Another characteristic of the matrix is that she keeps you busy,
preferably by making you attend meetings. Meetings follow another
back-to-back, sometimes they even overlap. The number of free
slots on the calendar is inversely proportional to its owner’s
importance. “Lunch is for loses”. The higher the paygrade, the
more suspicious spare time becomes. And yet it is exactly that
time in which results are made, ideas developed, informal
conversations are led or at least the next meeting gets prepared.


The matrix’s advocates argue that she would most naturally foster
exchange and communication in an ever more complex world. An
absurd point of view. Truth is that without extreme effort in
communication matrix organizations would never ever work because
conflicts lurk at every single node; -- stylizing that necessity
for compensating a weakness into a strength though needs a
supreme capacity for dialectics. In truth, the matrix makes
everybody a „army of one”. The more complex the matrix, the
smaller the common denominator. Usually the overlap boils down to
the dimension of one: the ego.


All of this is hardly new. That the matrix’s heyday is past
should be clear since “agile” has emerged from obscure circles of
software developers into the mainstream of management. Yet the
matrix’s persistence is one of the major reasons why agility
still has such hard times.


 
In vain

 


Look at our “i-tribe“. Management’s mandate was to manage that
“tribe” by agile means. Anything else would have been
compromising the term “tribe” after all. Yet this effort was
doomed to fail from the start. The first and most important
reason for this doom is that the “tribe” does not build anything
at all. Well, “not anything at all”is not correct. At least that
tribe creates bi-weekly status report for its steering committee
and in parallel an ever growing stack of slides hoew innovation
could be fostered across countries and functions. – But this
“product” will never be used by anyone. 


Hardly less important weighs the fact that the tribe’s members
manage to meet once a month at best due to their multitude of
other important tasks. And if they manage to meet after all, half
of the team won’t show up at all or participate via conference
call. The cynic reasons that it is irrelevant who participates
because the results are irrelevant anyway. The pragmatist puts
the conferencing station on low volume and works his mailbox
while listening whether his name is called.


The matrix does not only dissolve responsibility, it actually
dissolves action as such. Either the action is then surrendered
to consultants or you simply don’t care and move on … to the next
meeting.