3. Review the attachment Chapter 12 - Whole Organization and Multiple Organization Interventions (Part 1): Adjusting the Matrix and answer the following questions:

a. Use Jay Galbraith's Star Model to analyze the findings. Sort the issues by:

• Structure/Role
• Processes/Lateral Connections
• Metrics and Rewards
• People Development

b. Which seem to be the most important to address in this case?

c. Generate a set of options for interventions that could be considered at the individual, team, and organization level.

Please include references. Thank you.

This case demonstrates a best practice in activation. It shares the story of how the executive team of a services company (called here Solutions Co) implemented a matrix organization and then assessed results and made needed adjustments. Organization design is not done until the intended design is brought to life with people in new roles, working in new ways, and making different decisions that drive new outcomes. This process of \"activation\" often takes 2 to 3 years. Only then has the organization gone through multiple cycles of business planning and performance monitoring. During this time, leaders will notice that some of the intentions and assumptions of the original design work did not turn out as expected. A major part of activation is assessing results against expectations, diagnosing root causes of gaps, and then exploring and implementing needed adjustments to the design. OVERVIEW OF SOLUTIONSCO Solutions Co is a multibillion-dollar company that provides technical services and information technology support to its clients. It was spun off from a larger company. At the time of the separation, leadership organized the new company as a two-dimensional matrix, one axis focused on capabilities and one focused on customers. During the rst 2 years after its spinoff, the company achieved numerous successes in terms of customer wins and access to new markets that were partly attributable to the new organizational structure. However, leaders recognized the need to clarify the roles and responsibilities of frontline supervisors related to the management of people, particularly in the areas of performance management, compensation, and professional development. THE MATRIX The SolutionsCo matrix has two dimensions: Five customer-facing organizationsthe Customer Groupsdevelop deep customer knowledge and relationships, lead the proposal process, and oversee the delivery of services through program teams to meet contract specications. The seven Service Lines maintain and develop capabilities and deploy skilled and ready employees to the program teams. The intent of the SolutionsCo matrix is to optimize two strategies. Customer Groups focus on meeting customer needs and ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction. The Service Lines ensure that the company has a ready supply of current and emerging technology skills. By working together, all the assets and expertise of the rm are visible and available to win and deliver projects in a highly competitive market. With the launch of the matrix, the leadership team undertook careful definition of frontline management roles. On the customer side, Program Managers were defined as the key supervisors of daily work. For large programs, there are often additional levels of supervisors, or task leaders, who report to the Program Manager. Program Managers were tasked with accountability for the following: Program management (prioritization, program delivery, program review, technical staff management during program execution, and external customer satisfaction) Business development (planning, pipeline management, pricing) Demand planning (people and resources) In addition to the Program Managers, a set of technically experienced staff within each capability-focused organization were assigned responsibility for the development and deployment of 20 to 30 employees each. These staff, called Team Leads, were tasked with the following: Technical capability (provide the technical solution, make vs. buy decisions, capability development and investment) People (technical recruiting and hiring, resource deployment/redeployment, development and training, performance reviews) Team Leads are billable employees with their own project responsibilities. The management role was expected to take approximately 5% of time away from project work. This delineation of responsibilities is effective and straightforward when Team Leads are on the same program as the Program Managers and when the teams are long term, stable, and co- located. In this case, the two are managing both the work and the people together. In some cases, however, employees and Team Leads are not co-located or assigned to the same projects. In these cases, called cross-connects, employees do not have regular contact with the Team Lead. Many Team Leads charged with supporting employees remotely or outside of their projects struggled to provide coaching and professional development in the brief amount of time allotted by the design. Solutions Co leaders understood that working in a matrix would be new for many employees, particularly frontline supervisors who now had to coordinate with colleagues to ensure that people were appropriately developed, deployed, managed, and engaged. The Customer Group/Service Line Working Group (Working Group) was set up to identify and address issues related specically to the new organization structure. The Working Group is not a decision-making body. They describe themselves as \"catchers of issues,\" which they surface together with recommendations for enterprise resolution. The Working Group has 12 members drawn from across the organization and from all levels of management. Membership rotates. Two respected and senior leaders from each side of the matrix serve as cochairs, set the agenda, and facilitate the discussion. The group, which meets weekly, has proved highly valuable as a way to identify and address organizational is sues that might otherwise not get coordinated leadership attention. Many issues that have come to the Working Group have had to do with the mechanics of people management. While the organization was seeing tangible success collaborating on proposals and the actual delivery of services, there was significant confusion regarding the roles and responsibilities of various supervisors. The Working Group wanted to ensure that this confusion did not contribute to employee turnover and conducted a survey to frontline managers to assess the situation. DIAGNOSIS Kates Kesler Organization Consulting was engaged to conduct a diagnosis on the root causes of the confusion and to develop potential options for resolution. In-depth interviews were conducted with a diagonal slice of 20 leaders to better understand the issues highlighted in the survey as well as those collected anecdotally by members of the Working Group. The diagnostic process found that overall the matrix structure was producing the intended wins for the business. The customer strategy was clear, internal competition had been eliminated, and the company was able to bundle capabilities for bigger and repeatable wins. The company was starting to get the promised benefits of both agility and leverage of assets through the matrix. The following was a typical example cited: We had the opportunity to bid on a big training contract. Solutions Co had a good relationship with the customer, but only for software development. Meanwhile, another part of our business specialized in training. Before the matrix, the connection between the customer relationship and a capability would never had been made. This time we came together. The customer group team led the calls. The service line repackaged our capabilities. We beat several strong competitors. In the past, we would not have even put in a bid, much less won it. The diagnostic process also found that the division of supervisory tasks seemed to work well for stable, long-term projects where Team Leads were co-located with their teams and assigned to the same program. In many ofthese cases, Team Leads also served as task leaders so that roles of supervisor and career coach were resident within the same person. However, where these ideal conditions did not exist, there was likely to be some degree of confusion. The diagnostic made a number of observations (typical comments are in italics): Program Managers feel accountable for performance to the customer, but often feel disempowered to manage performance effectively because they only have limited input and visibility into the performance management process. We need a mental shift. The Program Manager should own the person while they are on the program. The Team Lead should focus on longer-term development. Ideally, the employee should feel they have two people looking out for them', two places for information. Solutions Co has a simple matrix but a diverse business. The wide variation in program size, duration, and skill mix means that what works in one situation doesn't work in another, regardless of the skills or mind-set of the Team Leads and Project Managers. We play at the extremes of the businessboth low cost and highly customized. We can't have one size ts all customer types. For smaller, more dynamic programs, there is more coordination needed between the program and service line to bring in or exit people. On the other hand, in some places we have 150 people who have all been working for the same Program Manager for the past 10 years. Let's not complicate it there. Cross-connects exacerbate these issues. When not co-located with their teams, few Team Leads can successfully execute the intention of the role or build needed working relationships with the Program Managers. We are very lean and don't have a lot of time to spend on managing. When there is distance it is even more difcult. As a Team Lead, I had three people who I never met. I did performance reviews based on what the Program Manager gave me. The employees didn't feel that I really knew them or their work. ANALYSIS Frontline employees everywhere want good managementto feel that \"I have someone to go to for coaching, I am being fairly evaluated by all the people who have a stake in my performance, and someone is looking out for my development and career.\" At Solutions Co, this work has been divided between the Team Lead and the Program Manager. The root causes of confusion are the following: (Structure) The matrix connection sits very low in the organization. This creates a huge number of people who have to work together to manage others, on top of delivering their day jobs. This construct puts a lot of pressure on a lean organization. (Structure) While the concept of collaborating across the matrix has been embraced, the layers don't line up across the Service Lines and the Customer Groups. This creates complex interactions, particularly on large projects, where the Program Managers and task leaders are layered and dealing with multiple service lines and Team Leads, some of whom are not on the proj ect. (Structure) A one-size-flts-all frontline management model doesn't fit the diversity of the business; therefore, roles and responsibilities must be clearly dened but also allow for exibility. (Processes) The frontline management task has been split awkwardly giving accountability for some core management tasks, such as performance management, to Team Leads, who sometimes lack visibility or daily connection to employees they help supervise. (People) The expectations of the Team Lead role are not consistently understood. and the Team Leads are not always enabled with the training, skills, or time to be effective frontline managers. With time, many of the kinks in the matrix have been or will be worked out by managers making their own adjustments on a team-by-team basis. But the fundamental issues identied here have been created by design choices. If these are resolved on a local level, the coherence of the overall construct will be lost, reducing agility across the company. Only a combination of interventions at the level of individual, team, and organization will address the issues raised in this case. The role of the organization designer and developer is to identify the interventions that will have the most impact against the issues, with the highest likelihood of success given the context. The work of leadership is to understand these options, make choices, and execute the changes