Susan Z. Finerty

With the caveat that the good overwhelms the bad for the target audience, I'll start with the bad. This book is not well written. I found myself having to put in extra effort to extract the points from some of the sections.

If you can get past the writing, however, the book is relevant for those who work in a matrix organization. Is that you? If you have multiple people you are accountable to or depend on people who you don't have authority over, then you're working in a matrix role, whatever the organizational structure says. Finerty provides seven principles for working effectively in these roles. These principles are based on the author's own fairly large survey, so while the advice isn't heavily studied, it does come from more than the author's personal experience.

The rest of this review is details about each principle.

Principle 1: Start With Partnerships. In matrix roles, individuals rarely have authority to get things done. They have to invest in relationships. Your partners are those you work with, hand work off to, or get work from. They are people who can influence your decisions and implementation, have needed knowledge or experience, or have authority over something you need.

Finerty models partnerships as being in four states:

• new/dysfunctional: Based on needs rather than relationship. It needs to be more integrated but isn't.


• transactional: Partners have a functional level of integration. Interactions are based around specific, isolated needs.


• collaborative / integrated: Partners with whom you have an ongoing relationship. The difference is more a matter of degree than type. E.g., an integrated partner may be someone you work with while a collaborative partner may be someone you hand work off to.

To build successful partnerships, you have to work to build it. Don't wait for the other person to make the first move. Partnerships are built by trusting the other person, being trustworthy, setting up reliable communication channels, cleaning up past conflicts, letting the other person know what you need, and explicitly asking about their needs.

You can build relationships further by being an advocate for your partner and including them in efforts. Most important and most challenging, work to turn conflict into opportunities to strengthen the partnership. A conflict can strengthen the conflict if it increases understanding of shared goals, clarifies roles, unearths hidden assumptions, etc.

Principle 2: Get Goals Aligned. People have different perspectives and priorities. This can lead to misalignment, which ruins a team's ability to get results. Misalignments that come from the different perspectives are natural misalignments and can be a fruitful source of getting better solutions. Man-made misalignments are caused by lack of communication or lack of updating goals as reality changes and can generally be avoided.

To align, whether initially or after a misalignment, it's useful to keep four rules in mind. First, keep the higher level goals in mind. Optimize for the overall goal rather than the goals most relevant to you. Second, be realistic and realize that you can't fulfill everyone's priorities. Make tradeoffs and focus. You'll sometimes be the one giving up something important. Finally, don't assume that goals are aligned. Communicate goals when they are set and periodically check to make sure they are still relevant (or adjust).

Involve the right people in goal setting. This is probably more people than you initially think. People involved in setting goals will be more committed, so include anyone who needs to be committed. The set of goals should be limited, and the limit is much smaller than you think -- think 5, not 50. A small list keeps everyone focused on the most important things. Finally, goals need to be kept visible. They should be present somewhere people can see, they should be explicitly used in setting goals and priorities, and they should be the framework with which you set the agenda for all meetings and planning.

Goal misalignment will happen, but isn't always worth tackling. If something is short term and low impact, let it go. If it's high impact or will affect results in the longer term, tackle it. Otherwise, keep an eye on it before deciding to take action. If you do tackle a misalignment, use the Communication Without Assumptions tips to frame it objectively.

Principle 3: Clarify Roles. Matrix roles are often fuzzy. There's no single decider or doer. If a lack of role clarity is causing problems, Finerty recommends using the RACI framework. List each responsibility; be detailed enough that you can really say the task should have well defined owners. For each task, decide who is Responsible for completing the task, Accountable for the completion of the task, Consulted about how the task should proceed, and Informed about the outcome. To make sure the result is valid, run it through "what-if" scenarios. E.g., "What if I get a question that is someone else's responsibility? How do I respond?"

Often, the discussion that happens while creating this is at least as valuable as the end product. It can provide justification for the decisions, reveal contrary assumptions, and trigger changes.

Assigned roles and responsibilities should not cause a loss of flexibility. However, if a lack of role clarity is causing confusion or inefficiency, then defining roles can help the team be more effective. In the extreme case that someone understands the roles but doesn't accept them, take time to recognize their position and renegotiate the roles to be more acceptable.

Principle 4: Get Decisions Made. Decision making in a matrix role depends more on expertise and communication than on titles. Consensus is not always possible, but command-and-control decisions are unlikely to get buy-in from the group.

Instead, structure decisions as a broad input base funneling into a narrower set of decision makers and then fanning out to those who need to be involved in implementation. Input should come from anyone who needs to buy into the decision as well as those that have relevant expertise. The decision should be made by those whose buy-in is required and are willing to invest time in the decision making process. More complex decisions should have more people involved. Finally, the result of the decision should be fanned out to anyone who needs to take action, anyone who influences those who take action, and people who will be affected by the decision.

Decisions are most effective when time is invested up front to make sure people understand the decision and decision making process and after to make sure the right people are informed and are following up on the decision.

A challenge with effective decision making is that we get so good at operating on auto-pilot that we don't realize we're making decisions. Instead of letting decisions become rote, it's worth taking time to first acknowledge when a decision needs to be made and what is being decided, be explicit about the process that will be used to make the decision, and set up the criteria that will be used determine the decision.

Principle 5: Flex Your Influence Muscle. Effective influence balances your concerns with what you try to change. Use your influence too little, and you won't have any. Use it too much, and you'll be seen as controlling. So the first question to ask yourself about influence is, when should I use it? Finerty's rule of thumb is that if something is high impact, you should tackle it. If it's medium impact or something where you can have influence, keep an eye on it. But if you can't influence it and it's low impact, let it go.

Influence comes from meaningful conversations. You should proactively work to build strong relationships, show a willingness to be influenced, and do the research to understand other people's perspectives. In the moment, you should frame the issue in a way that is objective and is meaningful to the listener, approach the issue as a dialogue, get them to participate in the conversation, aim for clear, concise communication, and summarize and synthesize the conversation as it goes on.

It's worth noting what's not on the list. Influence is not about manipulation or about tactics for persuasion. Instead, it's about having the skills to forge a shared perspective that fulfills your goals while still being beneficial to others.

Principle 6: Communication Without Assumptions. In a matrix role, you are often communicating with people who don't have your context. When you're communicating, especially with people in a different team or role, don't make assumptions about what they know or don't know, what they have heard, what they need to know, or that you know all of their context.

Communication assumptions can lead to both under- and over-communication. Because of this, there's no hard rule for how effectively communicate. There are various useful approaches. Dialogue allows others to communicate how much information they need. Structuring information hierarchically (e.g., "Click here for more") let's people select how much detail they want in broadcast communications. Other techniques involve working to understand what they know and how they prefer to communicate, asking questions (more than you think you need!), and working to absorb the information you hear before sharing more.

Principle 6: Make Meetings Matter. Running effective meetings is a topic that has been covered in excess. What does she bring to the table? Much advice about meetings is about tactics for success -- e.g., have an agenda. She has some of that, but the most important piece of advice she gives is that meetings matter. Good meetings are not time taken away from work; they are some of the most productive parts of the workday.

You only get out of meetings what you put into them, in prep time, in attention, and in attitude. To that end, Finerty gives some more tactical advice for how to run effective meetings.

• Attempt to talk yourself out of having the meeting. E.g., see if the topic could be covered with an email.


• Get really clear on the desired outcomes (not topics). E.g., "Discuss survey results." is a topic. "Review the data and decide what we will act on." is an outcome.


• Make your agenda an outline of the thought process that will lead to the desired outcome. E.g., "Review data. Identify issues with biggest impact. Determine owners and next steps."


• Invite the right people and ask them to make specific preparations. E.g., "Review the survey summary before the meeting."


• Actively facilitate to keep the meeting focused on producing the desired outcomes. E.g., table tangental conversations and actively decide whether to let the agenda change based on the discussion.


• Follow-up and hold people accountable. E.g., follow-up with people who had assigned tasks.




If you're not facilitating, you can still get some of these effects. E.g., ask what the outcomes and agenda for a meeting are. If a meeting has no facilitator, you can take on that role.

… (mere)