Less of a Matrix, more of a Cluster

Maybe it's time for another tale from the world of advertising and corporate America. We need to keep reminding ourselves of how the brilliant business minds of the “makers” work.

Some years back, the management of some divisions of Exxon briefly fell under the spell of a “process expert” and management guru from some university. Par is, these guys have never actually run anything bigger than a lawn mower, but they have “researched”, “studied”, and written whole academic papers on their Theories of Organizational Management and Structure. (always capitalized)

Professor Wizard convinced them of the power of groupthink. And, under his careful guidance, the headquarters implemented a Management By Matrix structure. This was LONG before the movie of the title.

Each major function or task was assigned to a Matrix Block, a group of 7-9 managers. (Never any people from the working levels who would actually have to implement decisions and policies flowing downward from these mountain tops.) All decisions would need the “confluence, connection, consensus, and commitment” of the entire matrix if it was to proceed. (management gurus love alliteration)

What this meant was, nine guys, each one jockeying for promotion over all of the others in the room, would have to agree unanimously on every decision. Any one of the nine could say “NO” to an idea, and no one in the group, not even a majority of the group, could say “YES”--only the entire matrix in consensus could say yes.

The most important little item of corporate politics that jumps out is that not any single member of the cluster could claim credit and bragging rights about any idea or successful venture, while every single one of them would wear the career stain of any failures coming out of their group. It was the total and absolute re-invention of cluster, uh, gridlock. Bring on the Maalox.

For a time, this worked really well for Middle/Upper Middle management. After all, its was lots of meetings, equal “power” for each one in the matrix, and not one evaluation of them on individual achievement or productivity. Nothing happened, and they got paid. An MBA/B School dream. “We met and discussed several items,” was a report for a whole day's “work.”

While it may have been good to the corporate drones, it was hell in a bucket for any outside vendors or agencies, like their ad agency. It instantly became impossible to get anything approved, whether marketing plan, ad design, copy, media buy, or even who should cater the annual sales picnic. “No, that just doesn't quite work for me,” was the killer phrase heard from some corner at every meeting. Meetings always ended with the direction to, “Go back and see if you can't come up with something better” And, of course, no definition of how “better” would be measured. And, of course, outside vendors would be held to all deadlines. If they couldn't satisfy the entire matrix, that was certainly not the fault of the matrix.

One of the things that made this system REALLY unworkable was that each Matrix Block by design contained a “Multiphasic Skill Set”--guru-speak for “people from several disciplines and departments.” Engineers, accountants, sales managers, geologists, etc. So that you could not gear any idea or presentation to any particular mindset with the hope of approval.

The whole matrix had to agree on even the smallest item for it to advance—including meeting times, locations, and duration. One high point was a two-hour meeting with only one item on the agenda—deciding when to hold the next meeting.

As my wise friend George Arnold once said after a lengthy, talky, totally non-productive and pointless meeting, “Those guy will talk about how much they worked today. I accept only the physicists definition of work. If no movement has occurred, no work has taken place.”

It took upper management about three months to begin to realize that absolutely nothing was happening, and that many corporate functions were simply grinding to a halt. So, they did the predictable thing. They formed another, slightly more high-level, Matrix Block to study the situation, and develop, “Implementarily Possible Structural Frames for Organizational Throughput Maximization.” I'll bet those were fun meetings. Luckily, the ad agency wasn't invited.

Besides obvious reasons, I tell all of this because one of my favorite corporate phrases came out of one of our meetings with the matrix. We were presenting a concept for an ad campaign for Diesel Engine Oil—aimed at owners and drivers of 18 Wheelers. As in all such early presentations, the layouts were artists sketches, and the copy on the layout was presented just as a block of ruled lines—the actual copy appearing alongside the layout on a typed sheet. One of the engineers, seeing ad layouts for the first time in his life, just couldn't get his head around the process. He'd ask, “But why don't we use real pictures? (photographs)” We'd explain, “We will, this is just concept, no reason to spend money on a photographer until it's approved.”

He'd say, “Why aren't the words on the same page as those drawings?” We'd say, “When the copy is finally approved, it will be typeset, and printed in the ad in the magazine, meanwhile, there are a lot of approval steps it will go through, even legal.”

He'd say, “It doesn't look like a magazine ad to me.” And we'd say, it's a layout, a concept, to help everyone visualize, imagine, what the finished ad will look like and say.”

Then he hit us with it:

“Well, I just can't imagine how someone can imagine something that I can't imagine.”

These are the people who tell you that government ought to run “more like a business.”