Matrix Management vs. The Cloud

Sorry Scott — I couldn’t find this on your website on the date listed on the gif file.

Finally, someone says it: matrix management is what we call it in a business school when we can’t figure out whether a firm has any structure at all.

P.S. Do you think it is coincidence that fewer people have outlining skills, or can construct an argument in prose, and the fact that business structures have gotten more disorganized?

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Comments

[Kevan Hall]

A matrix has more strucure than other forms of organization. Old organizations only had vertical lines for geography and function. The matrix adds horizontal lines from product groups, customers and business processes.

Its just a reflection of external and internal complexity, if companies could get it done through a simpler structure, they would

[Dave Tufte]

Agreed.

But I think your explanation sounds optimistic. I don't think the reality on the ground works so well.

I think part of the problem is that the old school "pyramid" form was designed for an internal structure based on command and control.

I'm all for decentralization, but if you think a matrix is going to work well with command and control I've got some land on Mars to sell.

I think the practical problem with matrix organization is that companies have moved insufficiently away from command and control and insufficiently towards a communicable incentive system to allow it to work.

[escortes St. Tropez]

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