Cracking the matrix code

Hay Group's research on the Fortune Most Admired Companies shows that those who make the matrix work get results: better and faster decisions. The seemingly simple trick is getting managers to act in the best interests of the company as a whole, not just maximizing their own results.

But this has implications for jobs, rewards, behaviors, culture and structure. Most critical: command-and-control management styles must give way to collaboration and cooperation. To crack the matrix code, organizations must:

• Redefine success - building a culture in which executives optimize for the whole rather than maximizing their own constituent parts


• Focus on behaviors - the most fundamental, but perhaps the most difficult, element in making the matrix work means individual heroism is no longer the way to the top


• Create doable roles that account for the size and shape of the job


• Reward and recognize performance based on the employee's contribution to the whole, not just to their part of the organization


• Use a strategic scorecard which focuses on 'What can we do together that we cannot do apart?"

To download a copy of Hay Group's new white paper, Cracking the matrix code, click here (no charge).