Horizontal silos – a matrix management trend

Eight trends in matrix management #8 Horizontal silos

At Global Integration, we expect that matrix organizations in the future will see the growth of truly horizontal organization structures in areas where the needs of global customers, or common workflow, are stronger than the needs for a functional or local organization.

The two primary candidates for this are probably the development of horizontal supply chain and global accounts organizations.

In these areas we might find that professional development, careers, information systems and reward are all closely aligned to the horizontal activity crosses the traditional vertical functions of the organization.

In the same way that we developed the vertical functional silos, these horizontal silos may become very powerful, and people may pursue complete careers within them. But remember that we embarked on our journey towards a matrix management structure in order to break through traditional silos and improve cooperation. We must be careful not just to replace our traditional vertical silos with horizontal silos and find ourselves back at step one.

These horizontal structures will also have to coordinate with the rest of the organization so, although having dedicated global accounts and supply chains organizations may make it easier for them to focus on their own workflow and priorities, they will still need to engage other parts of the organization in order to be successful.

Why not….?

• Read more about global accounts management.
• Find out more about matrix management structures.
• Find out about the challenges Poyry faced, and how they resolved them.