Matrix management pdf

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Find out why they chose Matrix. Who We Are. What We Offer. There are three types of project team styles: weak matrix, balanced matrix and strong matrix teams. The hard matrix format is similar to a dedicated team, where the team members have a clear line of reporting to the project manager. The project manager is the functional manager until the project ends. Generally, the function the team member belongs to loses that person for the duration of the project.

In the balanced matrix form, team members report to both the project manager and functional manager. In this form, members are generally expected to be working on the project and in their function, keeping both managers informed. The weak form of matrix typically means that the project manager has to communicate with the functional managers of each respective team member. Each member reports to their functional manager for tasks on both functions and the project they are assigned to.

While there are many benefits of a matrix management approach, there are challenges as well. A number of these include:. To reduce the confusion, conflicts, and loss of clarity, responsibilities should be defined in the project charter or agreed upon by the managers involved.

Members assigned to a project should be thoroughly vetted to ensure they are capable of handling the increase in the volume of work. Different forms of matrix styles should be explored to ensure that the proper one is chosen for the capabilities of the team members and the firm. Documentation should be thorough and throughout the project to protect the lessons that are learned and provide evaluation information for the team members.

Working in a matrix environment can be both rewarding and frustrating. Your exposure to different initiatives and colleagues will support learning and relationship development.

However, it is important for an employee working in a matrix to understand your firm's approach to your evaluation and development. Some actions you can take as a matrix team member are:. Because past success is no longer a sufficient qualification for increasingly subtle, sensitive, and unpredictable senior-level tasks, top management must become involved in a more discriminating selection process.

At Matsushita, top management selects candidates for international assignments on the basis of a comprehensive set of personal characteristics, expressed for simplicity in the acronym SMILE: specialty the needed skill, capability, or knowledge ; management ability particularly motivational ability ; international flexibility willingness to learn and ability to adapt ; language facility; and endeavor vitality, perseverance in the face of difficulty.

These attributes are remarkably similar to those targeted by NEC and Philips, where top executives also are involved in the senior-level selection process. Once the appropriate top-level candidates have been identified, the next challenge is to develop their potential. The most successful development efforts have three aims that take them well beyond the skill-building objectives of classic training programs: to inculcate a common vision and shared values; to broaden management perspectives and capabilities; and to develop contacts and shape management relationships.

Then they learn how to translate these internalized lessons into daily behavior and even operational decisions. The second objective—broadening management perspectives—is essentially a matter of teaching people how to manage complexity instead of merely to make room for it.

To reverse a long and unwieldy tradition of running its operations with two- and three-headed management teams of separate technical, commercial, and sometimes administrative specialists, Philips asked its training and development group to de-specialize top management trainees.

By supplementing its traditional menu of specialist courses and functional programs with more intensive general management training, Philips was able to begin replacing the ubiquitous teams with single business heads who also appreciated and respected specialist points of view. Although recruitment and training are critically important, the most effective companies recognize that the best way to develop new perspectives and thwart parochialism in their managers is through personal experience.

By moving selected managers across functions, businesses, and geographic units, a company encourages cross-fertilization of ideas as well as the flexibility and breadth of experience that enable managers to grapple with complexity and come out on top.

Unilever has long been committed to the development of its human resources as a means of attaining durable competitive advantage. As early as the s, the company was recruiting and developing local employees to replace the parent-company managers who had been running most of its overseas subsidiaries.

Although delighted with the new talent that began working its way up through the organization, management soon realized that by reducing the transfer of parent-company managers abroad, it had diluted the powerful glue that bound diverse organizational groups together and linked dispersed operations.

The answer lay in formalizing a second phase of the -ization process. In addition to bringing to managers to Four Acres each year, Unilever typically has to of its most promising overseas managers on short- and long-term job assignments at corporate headquarters.

Furthermore, the company carefully transfers most of these high-potential individuals through a variety of different functional, product, and geographic positions, often rotating every two or three years. Widening the perspectives and relationships of key managers as Unilever has done is a good way of developing identification with the broader corporate mission. But a broad sense of identity is not enough.

To maintain control of its global strategies, Unilever must secure a strong and lasting individual commitment to corporate visions and objectives. In effect, it must co-opt individual energies and ambitions into the service of corporate goals. As organizational complexity grows, managers and management groups tend to become so specialized and isolated and to focus so intently on their own immediate operating responsibilities that they are apt to respond parochially to intrusions on their organizational turf, even when the overall corporate interest is at stake.

Philips concluded that it could co-opt individuals and organizational groups into the broader vision by inviting them to contribute to the corporate agenda and then giving them direct responsibility for implementation. In the face of intensifying Japanese competition, Philips knew it had to improve coordination in its consumer electronics among its fiercely independent national organizations. In strengthening the central product divisions, however, Philips did not want to deplete the enterprise or commitment of its capable national management teams.

The company met these conflicting needs with two cross-border initiatives. First, it created a top-level World Policy Council for its video business that included key managers from strategic markets—Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan. Through the council, Philips co-opted their support for company decisions about product policy and manufacturing location.

Second, in a more powerful move, Philips allocated global responsibilities to units that previously had been purely national in focus. The change in the attitude of NAP managers was dramatic. They were making important contributions to global corporate strategy instead of looking for ways to subvert it.

We have splendid cooperation with Philips in Eindhoven. Since the end of World War II, corporate strategy has survived several generations of painful transformation and has grown appropriately agile and athletic.

Unfortunately, organizational development has not kept pace, and managerial attitudes lag even farther behind. As a result, corporations now commonly design strategies that seem impossible to implement, for the simple reason that no one can effectively implement third-generation strategies through second-generation organizations run by first-generation managers. Today the most successful companies are those where top executives recognize the need to manage the new environmental and competitive demands by focusing less on the quest for an ideal structure and more on developing the abilities, behavior, and performance of individual managers.

Change succeeds only when those assigned to the new transnational and interdependent tasks understand the overall goals and are dedicated to achieving them. It lets individuals make the judgments and negotiate the trade-offs that drive the organization toward a shared strategic objective. You have 1 free article s left this month. You are reading your last free article for this month. Subscribe for unlimited access. Create an account to read 2 more.