Tips for leading, and leading within, a matrixed environment

For this month’s edition of the March Foreword we delve into the gnarly world of matrixed organisations.

Love them or hate them, you’ve got to live with them, because it stands to reason that in a business which relies on collaboration, you can’t just have vertical interfaces – that’s the stuff of silos.

I was a managing director at a FTSE 250 multi-platform publisher, Future Plc. We ran websites, magazines, and events across over variety of passion verticals.

I was responsible for gaming and music across all our platforms, which meant I had to interact with the leaders of several operational horizontals throughout the business, for example subscriptions, advertising sales, events, or technology.

It meant that every challenge we faced was an intersection of at least one vertical with at least one horizontal. it could be growing subscriptions across the gaming portfolio, meeting our sponsorship target in music events, or optimising our digital portfolio for search

In the ideal world, solving these challenges comes down to collaboration with shared business interests, but the uncomfortable reality is that priorities within the vertical and the horizontal are not always the same.

So how do you navigate that?

Here are my five tips for both leading within a matrix, and leading the matrix itself.

First, 5 tips for leaders within a matrix.

1. Make sure you know who your first team is

What we all learnt very early on is that our first team was not the team that reported into us. It was the team of peers with whom we worked. In the matrix shakedown, you should be worrying more about how you collaborate across the verticals and horizontals than focusing on your silo.?

2. Make it your business to know the other parts of the business

As a senior leader within a matrix business, and working alongside your peers in Team 1 from other parts of the business, it’s imperative that you know enough about their areas to credibly challenge their thinking.? After all, they have a direct effect on your own business area.

3. Understand how you can help others, and how they can help you

You must be curious. Ask “bloody good questions“ - these are questions which can only be asked from a position of foundational knowledge, and often get a response along the lines of “oh that’s a bloody good question”.? With elevated knowledge across the whole business, you will understand how your peers can help you, and how you can help your peers – this is the secret to high-performing collaboration.

4. Share learnings - be generous

High-performing collaborative teams default to knowledge-sharing. “Knowledge is power“ is the preserve of the most toxic silos. We’ve all worked in organisations like that - it’s not very much fun and not an awful lot gets done.? Trust that the good karma will treat you well because it will.? And if it doesn’t, there are plenty of organisations which deserve you more.

5. Be okay with a bit of friction

There’s nothing wrong with a little friction between trusted peers who share good intent. Friction equals traction. There is, however a Goldilocks element to friction: too little and everything slides, too much and everything sticks. A bit like the right amount of pasta water to add to your dish - an analogy I had no hesitation in using with a leadership team in Milan last month!

And now if you find yourself leading a whole matrix organisation:

5 tips for leaders of a matrix

1. Champion Collaboration

You know perfectly well that priorities rub up against each other in the matrix. The way to resolve issues like this is not to wind up your business leaders and set them off against each other like fighting cocks in a dust bowl.? The act of leadership required here is to champion constructive collaboration (with the right amount of friction).

2. Collectivise decision making and ownership of goals

Your leadership team should be a leadership collective. Don’t allow your business unit leaders to make all their decisions in a silo. The most important decisions (ones which directly impact adjacent verticals or horizontals) need to be made collectively. In addition, your team one should have a vested interest in each other’s goals and be able to contribute to their successful realisation.

3. The 4C’s - connected, challenging, confident, consistent

These are our four hallmarks of a high performing leadership collective. Your team has to build connection in order to constructively give and graciously receive challenge. Confidence comes when each team member knows that they have each other’s backs, and this will help them stay consistent and true, even when the going gets tough.

4. Discuss, debate, decide

At the highest levels of operation in a business, debate is essential, but as mentioned before, no cockfighting. Quality debate must be preceded by informative discussion (fuelled by bloody good questions), and it has to end with decision. No decision will be perfect (find me a perfect matrix). More right than wrong swings it.

5. Make sure the strategy is crystal clear

The foundation of all this has to be your business strategy, because it should be the filter through which all your decisions must pass. If they don’t, then by definition, they are not in service of your strategy and you are wasting your energy.

It may well be that your strategic filters remove some of your matrix conundrums.

When your strategy is clearly articulated and understood by everyone in your business, your matrix will run better.

I hope you find this helpful, and in the aforementioned spirit of collaboration why not share your tips for leading in the matrix in the comments below.