A lot of us work in complex organisation structures that are organised across geographies, product lines and nature of work itself (In technology companies this could be Engineering, Professional services and Support). we then are subject ot directions and expectations of multiple "bosses" who typically operate at higher hierarchy levels. At a more nuanced level personalities and style of management of these "bosses" further complicate matters.
For a professional working in such structures there emerge avoidable conflicts that can be traced to lack of specific clarity on how to operate within these organisation structures.
The technique I have found useful is to understand that all your interaction points can be reduced to fundamentally 3 categories - the internal Customer, the internal Supplier and the Appraiser. Calling out the primary relationships and discussing expectations goes a long way in ensuring that you are well aligned in such organisations.
I find the "customer- supplier" distinction more useful than the ambigous "peers". Do note that in a given relationship there may be a supplier and customer component, that together defines the complete relationship.
The final category is the "Appraiser" and hopefully in most cases you have only one Appraiser!.(He in turn should take feedback from other internal customers and supplliers to better evaluate your effectiveness)
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Though ‘Customer – Supplier’ relation ship is a best business model, in my experience, in matrix organization structure when ever there is a conflict of interest between Appraiser and Customer.. as everyone knows- instructions from Appraiser takes precedence. Typical example being ‘New feature demand from internal customer (say sales person) against cost of development or resource availably in delivery organization’.
ReplyDeleteI gree that in case of conflicts, the appraier wins over the internal customer.
ReplyDeleteWhile this cannot be completely avoided, getting both conflicting parties in one room to decide priorities, allocations etc.. is a step to atleast improve the odds!