Why too much collaboration is a matrix management challenge

Many organizations introduce a matrix to break down the silos and improve collaboration across the business. This is a great objective, but an unintended consequence is often that we get what we ask for – a big increase in the amount of collaboration that goes on. This shows itself in more meetings and more people involved in decisions.

Too many meetings and slower decision making are two of the top five challenges that organizations face in making matrix management effective.

One of our clients in the past famously linked performance evaluation to the amount of collaboration that people did, so if you went to a lot of meetings, you scored highly! It didn’t take long to realise that was a perverse incentive.

It’s a paradox of the matrix that at the same time as we want to encourage more collaboration across the silos, we also need to become more selective about who we collaborate with, otherwise we can become swamped.

When we have multiple bosses or are part of multiple teams that engage with multiple stakeholders we can find that all of them invite us to their meetings, copy us on their emails and expect us to become involved.

In our matrix management training we focus on two key themes in this area

• Reducing the number and improving the quality of meetings – where we can save people up to a day per week of unnecessary meetings while simultaneously improving collaboration
• Speeding up decision making by clarifying decision rights and who really needs to be involved

As you start planning for 2024, would you like to save yourself a day a week of unnecessary meetings and speed up your decision making. If so why not get in touch?