When I first started training and consulting, a frequent complaint from managers and employees was that the organizational right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. A customer might be working with a number of departments in an organization, but the departments could be ignorant of the fact. The customer often knew more about the organization as a whole than the company’s functional representatives. It wasn’t unknown, I was told, for a customer to play two or more sales groups in the same organization against one another to get a better deal!
In his book, “Designing Matrix Organizations That Actually Work,” Jay Galbraith shares the story that DaimlerChrysler was being ‘serviced’ by 37 different sales teams from ABB—and members of these teams didn’t know each other (obviously not a best practice role model for talking with one voice to the customer).
Now, of course, right-hand and left-hand doesn’t begin to describe the complexity in many organizations. Today’s businesses more often resemble the Hecatonchires—gigantic creatures in Greek mythology with 50 heads and 100 arms.
Participants in my training sessions were saying things such as, “I thought we were supposed to keep things simple,” “What is upper management smoking!” and “Is this a crazy way to get people to leave the company without actually firing anyone?” It was no surprise that in the 1970s and ’80s matrix management began to lose favor. When I was doing a literature search for a forthcoming e-book on leading and working in complex organizations, I lost count of how many times I came across a matrix article with “Surviving” in the title.
In their book, “In Search of Excellence,” in 1982, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman declared that no excellent companies used a matrix design—it was too complex, rigid, over-engineered. In the 1990s, however, the matrix started making a comeback. Globalization and hyper-competition forced companies to look again at leveraging knowledge and expertise across traditional functional silos. Project work, virtual collaboration teams, and horizontal integration were back on the corporate agenda. Very few large organizations today are without some form of matrix in their structural and cultural makeup.
While the matrix structure challenged older, more mechanistic and hierarchical designs, the matrix now is being challenged by the need for even greater agility and fluidity. More organic, network designs now are made possible by the relentless and transformative power of digital technologies. I do agree with John Kotter, however, when he argues that the organization of the future will have both a hierarchical structure and adaptive networks. Whatever the future holds, we can be sure that most of us are going to be dealing with more volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), despite calls for keeping it simple.
Fostering Self-Leadership
As organizational designs become more complex, traditional leadership models in their pure form become more obsolete; in light of this, much has been written about the need for more collaborative, facilitative, and shared leadership models. While we continue to explore these models of leadership, we also must pay attention to developing leadership behaviors and mindsets in general—particularly self-leadership.
Self-leadership, in my view, is the intentional process of influencing our own feelings, thoughts and behaviors to fulfill our potential, thereby increasing the positive impact we can have on the world around us. Self-leadership is not self-absorption; it involves looking inwardly to contribute outwardly. As self-leaders, we take personal responsibility and accountability for being effective in our VUCA environment.
How does self-leadership show itself?
- Self-analysis to identify strengths and development areas
- Self-balance to avoid being overwhelmed by perceived chaos and complexity
- Self-control of feelings thoughts and behaviors in challenging circumstances
- Self-direction and focus in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity
- Self-discipline when there is no easy answer to “Who’s in charge?”
- Self-education when formal learning opportunities are unavailable
- Self-efficacy when feedback on personal capabilities is absent or rare
- Self-goal setting to stretch current capabilities
- Self-motivation when other motivators are ineffective
- Self-observation of functional and dysfunctional feelings, thoughts, and behaviors
- Self-talk to identify ongoing lessons learned from experience
How to Develop Self-Leadership
- Practice self-observation. It’s not an easy skill, but very necessary. We need to understand why, when, and under what conditions we demonstrate certain behaviors or feel certain feelings. With this understanding, we can increase our self-control when the conditions arise.
- Set personal stretch goals and track your progress. Take note of what psychological or environmental factors facilitate or inhibit your achieving those goals.
- Monitor how your beliefs help or hinder. We all have beliefs—whether conscious or not—that place limits on us, e.g., “I’m no good at handling conflict,” or “That’s too difficult for me.” Challenge these beliefs every time they come to the surface and create a new thought pattern or more positive image of your capabilities.
- Take accountability for everything you do or say. Ask for feedback often, and be open to change.
- Practice servant leadership whereby you take responsibility for serving internal and external customers or solving problems no one else is addressing. You will think very differently when you do.
We all must prepare ourselves for battling the organizational Hecatonchires on an ongoing basis. Hecatonchires never sleep, which is why we must urgently accelerate self-leadership development.
Terence Brake is the director of Learning & Innovation, TMA World (http://www.tmaworld.com/training-solutions/), which provides blended learning solutions for developing talent with borderless working capabilities. Brake specializes in the globalization process and organizational design, cross-cultural management, global leadership, transnational teamwork, and the borderless workplace. He has designed, developed, and delivered training programmes for numerous Fortune 500 clients in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Brake is the author of six books on international management, including “Where in the World Is My Team?” (Wiley, 2009) and e-book “The Borderless Workplace.”
