Dotted lines, double dotted lines, triple dotted lines – where shall we go next?

At last, someone still responsible for a major organisation has spoken out about the “Matrix” and done something about it. Bob Iger, re-appointed CEO of Disney, announced that he is “de-matrixing” the company. Good for him.

What is the matrix and how did it come about?

Google tells us: “A matrix organisation is a company structure where teams report to multiple leaders.” Wiki, on the other hand, puts it like this: “Matrix management is an organisational structure in which some individuals report to more than one supervisor or leader – relationships described as solid line or dotted line reporting.”

The objective is wholly desirable. There are people in any organisation who are experts in one aspect of the work or another.

They may have better qualifications, greater experience or a record of innovation that enables them to lead on new developments. Making use of their superior abilities is common sense. Failing to do so is to waste the company’s resources.

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Confusing, misleading and dangerous

The seemingly innocent matrix way of looking at an organisation is confusing, misleading and dangerous – not in concept but in practice. It stems from the old hierarchical pyramid.

At the top stood the Worldwide Big Boss with the Board – most of them hired to ensure support for his point of view. Under him was the Operating Big Boss (CEO) who then had lesser bosses reporting to them and who themselves had even lesser bosses – maybe several layers of them before you got to the workers.

Big organisations that try to run themselves from the centre either fail or become sluggish and lose momentum. Two good cases of this are Unilever and The British National Health Service. Too many structures originating from a civil service are like this. The employees in such businesses tend to cling to the greasy promotions pole for the whole of their careers because they are seldom fired.

Sometimes it is necessary to run an organisation, even a big one, from the centre. An example is the British Railway system and most transport organisations, passenger and freight. Where interconnection is a vital part of the customers’ needs it makes sense to be able to see what the other hand is doing. The splitting up of British Rail, in the way it was done, is a main cause of the current chaos there.

Hierarchical pyramids have been squashed, but not eliminated, in all sensible organisations. Managers reporting to more senior managers who then report to even more senior managers are clearly expensive and largely non-contributory.

It was at this point of organisation development that the matrix was not so much born as knocked together for us. There would be a normal P&P (pay and promotion) line management system. Within that there would be dotted line “responsibilities” to people beyond the P&P.

Almost inevitably these dotted line connections mostly lead to people who are senior to the immediate P&P boss. They may be of another department or product or company within the group. So the bewildered employees have to guess if they are really being paid and assessed by their immediate P&P or by the DLC (Dotted Line Connection).

Not only that, if DLC gives an instruction different from one given by P&P, which should they obey? It gets even more complicated when the dotted lines lead to different, often competing, sources.

I did something like this when I was building Cerebos Pacific Ltd. Wanting to get into fast food – and as the boss of the company – I had the bright idea of our becoming a franchisee of a wonderful duck cooking business operating in Petaling Jaya. It didn’t work.

When it failed, I brought in someone who knew what he was doing and Cerebos became the best franchisee of Pizza Hut in Asia. I had learnt my lesson. From then on, I got people who knew the businesses we moved into to run their operations. Anyone who wanted to seek the advice of someone else in the company could do so with encouragement. I de-matrixed even before we had matrixed!

Strategy and tactics

What distinguishes Top People’s work in a matrix-riddled organisation from those in one not beleaguered by the dotted line? In a word, micromanagement.

The longer answer is that the people at the top of a business are there to determine its strategy. Strategy is an organisation’s purpose and where it is heading. Tactics are how it is getting there and are handled by the managers. Surprisingly few organisations have these two aspects of running a business clearly defined.

As head of planning for a big business at one stage of my career I was constantly astonished at the trivia the most senior people would attend to. As a cynic once said, “the bicycle shed is the Board Agenda item that will engender most discussion”.

It is difficult to know the true details of a war in progress. What we can see of Russia vs Ukraine is that President Zelenskyy has a clear grasp of his strategy and leaves the tactics to his generals. That is why, if given the support he has been so widely promised, he will win the war. His opponent’s modus operandi is fundamentally different, it would seem.

In smaller businesses, strategy and tactics have to be carried out by the same people but the two parts of planning should still always be distinguished from each other.

A good way to achieve this is to have a meeting every quarter to consider two things: (a) the strategy of the business (b) the relationships between the top people in the organisation. The two items are closely connected. Seldom are either of them reviewed, even independently, and yet looking closely at them together resolves conflicts between top managers. This quarterly review is particularly important for startups. They involve headstrong young entrepreneurs. The relationships at the top often make or break the business.

 Getting people talking

The matrix is used to get people to talk to each other. Aficionados of the genre will claim that it does more, that it brings together people who might not otherwise even know they existed.

The internal communications of a large organisation used to be confined to the usually out of date telephone list and its circulation was restricted to senior people. The age of secrecy has now passed and good communications within a business are a primary task for the public relations team.

Who does what, and where their qualifications and experience were obtained, should be known to everyone working there.

The best relationships in the world are those where two people have an affinity, an internal sense of cooperation and understanding. You know when you meet someone with this sense of camaraderie.

Businesses are like all aspects of life in one sense. To be successful they need people who can disagree but remain good communicators. You cannot rely on it happening by luck, although it will for some people.

Diplomats have the sort of training needed to maintain peace in groups of contention. Business people get no such training but increasingly need it. Companies, especially, need to be able to make their resources as effective as possible.

The freedom to seek advice when and from whom you want it is how it works best. It beats the dotted line anytime.

The writer is founder and chair at Terrific Mentors International