Matrix Organization Design – Don’t Go There
By Michelle Malay Carter on April 23, 2008
Manish Kaushik posted the following question on LinkedIn:
What are the best ways to maximise work efficiency and achieve perfect interpersonal harmony in a matrix “multiple bosses” org structure – A) If you are one of the bosses, B) If you are the subordinate.
Here’s my take:
Multiple bosses is anything but efficient, and they are blatantly unfair and stress inducing. The involved parties will spend more time managing the relationships than they will getting work done.
Manager Defined
A manager, by definition, is one who is accountable for the output of others (his direct reports). When more than one person is ultimately accountable for anything or anyone, the door is open to buck passing and conflict.
Working For Others Is Fine. Reporting to Them All is Not
It is reasonable for an employee to do work for more than one person, but the employee should always ultimately report to one person. That person, his manager, can authorize his employee to do specific tasks or project work for others, but at the end of the day the manager and only the single manager should be accountable for the employee.
Managers are accountable for assigning tasks, prioritizing, and monitoring the workload of their employees. If more than one person has the ability to assign tasks, conflict and confusion will reign.
What If?
One boss could have the employee working on a large project that takes nearly all his time (and interest), and the other boss, may become resentful and give the employee demerits for poor time management. What will that do for engagement?
The Dreaded Performance Appraisal – Twice the Misery
When it comes time for performance appraisals, whose opinion will count? What happens when one boss says, you spend too much time planning, and the other says, you need to do more planning?
Matrix organizations are a petri dish for dysfunction. My advice, stay away from them.
I had two bosses once; it was not fun for any of us. You?
I’m OK. You’re OK. Let’s fix the system.
Filed Under Requisite Organization | 14 Comments
Judging Employee Potential Is Easy – Making Meaning of the Shades of Gray
By Michelle Malay Carter on April 21, 2008
I had my semi-annual dental visit last week. No cavities! As the dentist read my x-rays, I thought, how can he tell anything from that? It just looks like shades of gray. I had the same level of amazement during my children’s ultrasounds. I consider myself fairly intelligent, but I couldn’t tell a foot from an elbow. By the way, that blob on the left is my daughter.
I’m teaching a course this week called Judging Candidate and Employee Potential. As it turns out, managers are quite good at judging employee potential, when you provide them a contextual framework within which to make their judgments. Then, when we overlay a science-based, work-level complexity scale on top of their relative judgments, you’ve got a powerful tool for matching employees to jobs both today and in the future.
An Avoidable Problem – Role Mismatch
Our research shows that 35% of employees are cognitively mismatched to their roles – either underemployed and bored (20%) or over their heads and incompetent (15%).
Helping Managers Assess Talent
Our talent assessment process allows managers to make meaning of the shades of gray like medical professionals do with x-rays. Additionally, it shows them which inputs are relevant and which to exclude from their evidence base.
Why We Don’t Do Succession Planning
As I said in my succession planning posts, I think the reason organizations say succession planning is important but don’t do it is that they don’t have a credible process for distinguishing the shades of gray.
How do you bolster your managers’ ability to match employees to roles?
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Adaptive Path At Destiny’s Door
By Michelle Malay Carter on April 18, 2008
During my typical morning internet surfing, my circuitous route led me to this CEO job opening announcement at Adaptive Path.? Love the?name. ?After reading their website, I’m sure my management consulting firm, PeopleFit, could benefit from their” finding-your-market” and product design services.?? I still don’t fully understand what they do, but they seem hip, savvy, and smart.
We’re smart and savvy. I’ll stop short of hip. We, as well, have tremendously unique and valuable services to offer that aren’t the easiest to explain — specifically because they are so unique. One of those services being – Executive Talent Assessment.
How Do You Decide If a CEO is Qualified? – Not All CEO Jobs Are Equal
It seems that Adaptive Path is growing, and its three founders are looking to add a CEO. What PeopleFit could do for Adaptive Path that few others could is use a validated, science based approach to assess the work complexity level of the proposed CEO role and then screen their candidates for the corresponding level of cognitive capability.
Hugely Important Strategic Question
My question is are they going to continue with their “team leadership” approach or are these thought leaders looking to hire themselves a thought leader? It’s unclear. Here’s what they say:
“Right now, all three of us (Peter, Jesse, and Bryan) work as a team to keep Adaptive Path growing culturally, creatively, and financially. We don?t want to replace any of the current executives. We want someone with a unique mix of business experience, operational savvy, and leadership qualities.”
Partner or To-the-Next-Level Leader?
The candidate pool for hiring a cognitive “partner” who would add a different knowledge and skill base than that of the three founders would be different than the candidate pool for someone who could “take the business to the next level”. Taking the business to the next higher level would require a higher cognitive capacity than that which is currently in place.
Einstein Believed in Levels
If you don’t believe me, how about Einstein who said: “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” (Emphasis mine.)
Their Destiny – Humble Success, Implosion, or Sale?
Very few entrepreneurs have the humility necessary to understand when their “baby” has grown out from under them and now requires a level of leadership greater than they can offer. Relinquishing the top spot to an “outsider” and becoming their direct report takes guts and character. Usually when start ups hit this crucial point, they implode or are purchased.
No Strategic Decision Should Be Made without Looking Through This Lens
There may not be one right answer on this, but using a work levels and cognitive capacity framework to inform these strategic, destiny-determining, structural decisions is the best path to ensuring they continue to grow culturally, creatively, and financially.
As I’ve said before, hierarchy, like bacteria, is not inherently good or bad, but misunderstand or ignore them at your peril.? I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.
What do you think will happen?
Filed Under Corporate Values, Executive Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Strategy, Succession Planning, Talent Management, Work Levels | 2 Comments
Is Self Awareness for the Dogs? A Friday Funny
By Michelle Malay Carter on April 17, 2008
If self awareness is not your strong suit, perhaps you can take comfort in being more sophisticated than this dog.? He doesn’t recognize his back paw as his own and steadfastly defends his bone against the furry intruder.?
Take 40 seconds out for a laugh today.
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The Bookshelf Doth Mocketh
By Michelle Malay Carter on April 15, 2008
I’ve been tagged by Jim Stroup at Managing Leadership.
The Assignment
My assignment is to post sentences 6 – 8 on page 123 of a book that I am reading, list books yet to be read on my bookshelf, and pass the tag along.
Truth be told, I’m not currently reading any books as I am putting the finishing touches on a training course, Judging Candidate and Employee Capability, that I am teaching next week.? The books sit on the shelf, mocking me.
If I Were Reading a Book, What Would It Be?
But the highest one on my list is Upping the Downside: 64 Strategies for Creating Professional Resilience by Design by Mike R. Jay, executive business coach and entrepreneur.
Synchronicity
As synchronicity would have it, my last two blog posts, which I wrote before being tagged, are rooted in some of Mike Jay’s ideas. I’ve known for a while the our potential wasn’t limitless but having had the opportunity to work with Mike has enlightened me in the area of designing for resilience.
Here is an excerpt from page 123, which features an essay by John H. Richards. The excerpt is about Enneagram personality typology. Once again, I had not read this prior to writing the blog entry I posted last, it is eerily similar to what I wrote in my last post, Know Thyself.
Page 123, Sentences 6 – 8
“It was as if, when our lives were just beginning, each of us was led to a rack that held nine very different costumes. And we were told that putting on any one of these nine different costumes would give us what we wanted and needed – such as getting love and nurturing by our parents or caretakers. So we each selected and put on one of nine costumes, and then we totally forgot that we were not the costume.”
Great Books I’ve Partially Read and Plan to Get Back To
- Organization Design, Levels of Work & Human Capability – Edited book sponsored by the Global Organization Design Society (For shame. I haven’t read all 30 essays even though I wrote one.)
- The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure by Michael Raynor (Heard him speak, was impressed, got the book but haven’t finished it)
- Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture Controlled Church Nuetered the Gospel by Brian D. McLarren & Tony Campolo (Joined a book club but got busy and haven’t gotten back.)
Books I Reference Repeatedly
- Requisite Organization: A Total System for Effective Managerial Organization and Managerial Leadership for the 21st Century by Elliott Jaques
- Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan
Passing on the Tag
I am now tagging the following bloggers to play along:
Chris Young at Maximize Possibility
E. Forrest Christian at Requisite Writing
Tom Foster at Management Skills Blog
Judy McLeish at The Employee Factor
Amitai Givertz at Ami G’s Blogspot
Filed Under Corporate Values, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Strategy, Talent Management, Work Levels | 7 Comments
Know Thyself
By Michelle Malay Carter on April 14, 2008
This is a continuation of my last post where I asserted that you really cannot be anything you want to be,?and believing that you can be anything will leave you either depressed or judgmental.
It Begins in Childhood
The work of children is to figure out the world – to understand it physically and relationally.
Their work is to figure out who they are, who they want to be (which is not always who they are) and the process by which they can be who they want to be.
This is the folly of youth. ?We try to manipulate ourselves into a persona that is not necessarily us.
Kids have to figure out how to be accepted and how to win friends or at least, how not to be humiliated and ostracized.
These belief sets that we create for ourselves when we are six may very well be the things that entangle us later in life because they become tacit and affect our behaviors without our conscious awareness.
Some kids who are not mainstream by wiring cope by deciding that being cool comes about by being exactly opposite than mainstream and they join a fringe group.
Unfortunately, many of these “rebels” overdo on the other side of the pendulum and end up adopting a nonconformist persona that is not them either. Once again, they are playing a role to cope.
So What is Maturity?
I think the work of adulthood is to:
- figure out who we really are,
- separate it from who we think we should be or desire to be,
- then accept who we are, possibly by mourning who we are not,
- then embrace who we are, and
- seek environments, create processes, and build?networks that will help us be successful in spite of our shortcomings by using our gifts in the right environment, with enabling process and supportive networks.
Essentially, we spend 20 years building a fantasy?persona and then another 20 or so dismantling it in order to excavate who we really are.
Do you agree?
Photo Credit: icanteachyouhowtodoit
Filed Under Employee Engagement, High Potential, Personal Observation, Talent Management | 3 Comments
Can We Really Be Anything We Want to Be?
By Michelle Malay Carter on April 13, 2008
A quote on David Zinger’s blog got me thinking.
Ninety percent of the world?s woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves ~ Sydney J. Harris
Is this because self discovery is unnecessary if we believe we can be anything we want to be? We need not find out who we are, but rather we must find out what we want and go for it.
Is this why so many seemingly “have it all” types still feel bankrupt inside? Does true self-fulfillment come from being who we are rather than having what we want?
Newflash – Gutcheck
I don’t believe we can be anything we want to be, but yet that value is embedded in a lot of North American institutions, policies, practices. Our underlying beliefs, whether tacit or unconscious, drive our actions. Gut check time – do you really believe this?
Is the Myth of Unlimited Potential Liberating?
I realize the assertion that “we can be anything we set out mind to” is supposed to be liberating and encouraging, but instead, I think it leaves many feeling frustrated and inadequate and others prideful and judgmental.
What do you think?
Photo credit: Procsilas Moscas
Filed Under Corporate Values, High Potential, Personal Observation, Talent Management | 12 Comments
You Don’t Get to Choose Your Legacy – Will History Be Kind to You?
By Michelle Malay Carter on April 11, 2008
Of all his contributions to society, Elliott Jaques’ term “mid life crisis” has been the most renowned.
From the perspective of potential to change work life as we know it, it’s pretty far down the list.
Yet, Jaques’ other work, which represents a science-based, systems approach toward accountability, engagement, and effectiveness within organizations, remains largely obscure – like buried treasure waiting to be discovered.
I Hope This Isn’t It for Me
In a similar vein, of all the posts I have written, one that I wrote as a entertaining piece of filler, I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money, has been viewed, reproduced, and linked to more than any other post.
Here I am trying to change the world, and a seven-word, trick sentence steals the show!
I suppose it could be worse. These days, with video cameras at the end of everyone’s fingertips, our most embarrassing or terrifying moment may end up being our legacy ala YouTube.
Caught On Tape
Just ask this Miss Teen USA contestant. She digs a rather embarrassing hole for herself and just keeps digging. It’s only 51 seconds, but people may still be talking about this one in 51 years.
Filed Under Accountability, Employee Engagement, Personal Observation, Requisite Organization | Comments Off on You Don’t Get to Choose Your Legacy – Will History Be Kind to You?
Elliott Who? Elliott “MidLife Crisis” Jaques
By Michelle Malay Carter on April 10, 2008
- Where did the term ?midlife crisis? come from?
- How about ?corporate culture??
- Who founded the Tavistock Institute (precursor to OD?s seminal home, the National Training Lab)?
- Who received a special award from General Colin Powell in 1992 for military leadership and instruction?
- Who created an actual science out of the arbitrary, highly subjective selection, promotion, compensation, organizational design, and managerial leadership practices and principles — the kind most corporations use every day?
You guessed it, the late Elliott Jaques. (FYI – pronounced Jacks if you want to chat about him at a cocktail party; no letter “c” in the name if you want to Google)
Jaques is the creator of the meta-model Requisite Organization. If you’re in the business or any business, his model is one to be familiar with. If you are serious about wanting to change the system, not people, this is your book.
If This Stuff is So Great, Why Haven’t You Heard of Him?
Jaques’ colleague at George Washington University, Jerry Harvey, the author of the Abilene Paradox, dedicated a whole chapter in one of his books to this very question. The chapter is called, Musing about the Elephant in the Parlor: Who the the Devil is Elliott Jaques? To read it, click here and scroll down to reading number 5.
Career Choice Point
When I was exposed to his work, I had to dramatically change my consulting practice because I realized much of what I was currently doing was akin to putting lipstick on a pig. Luckily, I wasn’t very far into my consulting career and this choice was not very costly. But it is this very self-preservation crisis point, called anaclysis, that Jerry Harvey says keeps people from embracing the Requisite model.
Starter Article
Because Requisite Organization is a total-system model, reading the book itself can be a little like reading an encyclopedia. Here’s a great article by Art Kleiner to get you started, Elliott Jaques Levels with You.
I’m OK. You’re OK. Let’s fix the system.
Let me know what you think after you read it.
Filed Under Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Work Levels | 7 Comments
Requisite Organization Training Course – June 4 – Raleigh-Durham, NC, USA
By Michelle Malay Carter on April 9, 2008
Now that I’ve bashed training as nothing more than lipstick on a pig, I thought I’d offer some.
Quite a bit of what I write and rant is rooted in Elliott Jaques’ meta-model, Requisite Organization.
On June 4, I’ll be leading a short course on some of the basics of the model and their implications for organizational structure, employee engagement, leadership, talent management and systems design.
Please consider joining us. Click here to read more about the course.
Filed Under Accountability, Corporate Values, Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Felt Fair Compensation, High Potential, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Strategy, Succession Planning, Talent Management, Work Levels | Comments Off on Requisite Organization Training Course – June 4 – Raleigh-Durham, NC, USA
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