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If you’re confused about who, exactly, your boss is, you’re not alone. Welcome to the age of matrixed work environments.
A matrixed environment is one in which an employee has more than one boss in the traditional sense. You might have your manager – the individual to whom you report in the organization charts – but also less structured reporting relationships to other managers known as “dotted-line” reporting relationships. You may already have a matrixed reporting relationship and not even know it.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you work in an Information Technology department. You have two clients – the internal technological operations of the company for which you work, and your company’s external customers. During the course of normal operations, project managers or other professionals are routinely hired to head critical initiatives. The various departments of the company are linked by cross-functional groups that blur the lines between, for example, IT, accounting, marketing, and sales.
In such a scenario, you are reporting to at least two bosses – the immediate supervisor in your department and a project manager. You may even have an unofficial third boss, the owner of the company and/or another C-suite executive who requires personal attention outside of the regular organizational structure altogether. Additionally, you might be immersed in work and decision making outside of your specific field of expertise (such as acting as a database administrator working in a cross-functional group with accountants and salespeople), and lastly your work is both internal and external with vastly different mission objectives whose success and failure are measured by different people in completely different ways. Welcome to the matrix!
Working in such an environment is tricky and requires you to navigate a great deal of uncertainty with some real skills. Here are five recommendations to boost your effectiveness in a complex organizational structure, and to ensure you receive the accolades you’ve earned being what is really the modern business version of the Renaissance man or woman – an artisan who is skilled in many areas.
1. Understand Who Each Of Your Bosses Are – And What Each Expects Of You. It’s up to you to keep all your bosses satisfied. This can be tricky in nebulous work structures. It may be clear who writes your performance review, and certainly he or she commands special attention, but it may be unclear whether your job hinges on his or her review or the opinion of another boss, official or not. If you have any confusion about your deliverables for each boss or adapting to individual management styles, be aggressive about discovery. If you’re unsure, initiate conversations early. You don’t want to learn in your exit interview that your assumptions didn’t align with your bosses’ expectations.
2. Know Your Priorities. There is no master class for this; it’s is a major skill characterized by an advanced level of observation, learned through work experience, and unique to the company and dynamic in which you operate. In short, learn to “read to the room.” This takes common sense and emotional intelligence. For example, you may report to two bosses who have an equal say in your future, but an unofficial boss who has more influence than both of them combined. Who is first priority? Second? Third? It’s not an easy decision and it may take some trial and error before you can read the room with clarity, but if you can do that you will find it easier to manage competing priorities and people.
3. Overcommunicate. Maintain high visibility and transparency so that everyone knows what you are doing at all times. Be proactive about keeping everyone in the loop. If necessary, request regular touch base conversations with your various bosses to remain aligned on objectives. CC: all stakeholders on relevant conversations. Provide detailed updates at regularly scheduled meetings.
4. Move, Document, Move, Document. It’s tough to slow down when you’re juggling bosses and deadlines, but it is up to you to track your duties and accomplishments. Think of master chess players who write down each of their moves the moment after they make them. That’s what you need to do. It serves as proof of your work, boosting both your position in performance reviews and helping to resolve any disputes about how your time is allocated. It’s also a great analytical tool for postmortem reviews and professional development conversations.
5. Focus On Developing The Professional Relationships. Ideally, everyone has everyone’s back in your matrixed organizational structure, and that starts by nurturing the web of interpersonal relationships that make up your professional partnerships. To be effective, you must be collaborative, both mentor and mentored, and flexible in your thinking when dealing with conflicting personalities.
Philip Roufail contributed to this article.
Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.
