How to Succeed in a Matrixed Work Environment

Do Your Teams Know How to Succeed in a Matrixed Work Environment? If your employees work on multiple teams and report to multiple managers (directly or indirectly), you are working in a matrixed work environment. In a recent study of over 14,000 U.S. workers, Gallup reported that almost two-thirds of employees operate on matrixed teams. Advantages and Disadvantages of a Matrixed Work Environment When done right, the advantages of a matrixed environment are increased synergies, engagement, learning, innovation, and performance caused by better communication, higher levels of cross-functional collaboration, and strategic resource allocation. When done wrong, matrixed employees seem to spend more time and effort in negotiations and meetings than actually getting things done. With so many different responsibilities on various teams and projects, matrixed employees often complain of cognitive overload, role confusion, misaligned priorities, and people not doing their fair share. Based upon change management simulation data, here are four tips on how to take advantage of the positive aspects of a matrixed environment and reduce the negative risks.

Read the 4 Tips to Succeed in a Matrixed Environment at Work

VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER Conroy Boxhill US President Porter Novelli "LSA is no fluff.  My experienced leadership team had worked with strategy and leadership consultants before without great success.  LSA exceeded all expectations. People went through a metamorphosis with game changing behaviors. LSA gave me and our leadership team the foundation we needed for high growth. They have become my high stakes leadership Sherpa." See More Testimonials

Toolkits for Leaders

Proven tools for leaders to boost performance Get Toolkit Now

Proven tools to create strategic clarity Get Toolkit Now

About LSA Global

Strategic Clarity

High Performing Culture

Differentiated Talent

Get Aligned. Stay Aligned.™ Contact Us Today

How to Better Manage Workload as a New Manager

Now, More than Ever, New Managers Report Being Overwhelmed New managers often report being overwhelmed by their workload during "normal times." They struggle to keep up with all their new and unfamiliar responsibilities. It’s daunting.  They feel stressed about completing their “To Do” list while they try to focus on leading and coaching their teams effectively. Today's uncertainty and volatility just make it worse. The Temptation When faced with too many tasks and too little time, many of us default to checking off the so-called “urgent” and relatively simple tasks, regardless of their importance or value. It is not at all uncommon for managers to focus on urgent tasks (sometimes good), to ignore non-urgent activities (usually good), and to put off important projects (not usually good). The Research A 2018 study from Johns Hopkins asked participants to make trade-off decisions between tasks that varied in urgency and importance. It was set up so that urgent tasks expired faster, but important tasks paid more. The research found that people prefer to finish the urgent tasks first and plan to work on important tasks later because: Important Tasks are usually more difficult and further away from goal completion Urgent Tasks involve more immediate and certain payoffs And the busier research subjects got, the more they resorted to crossing off the urgent despite the important tasks being more highly paid. The Problem for Managers Too many managers – especially those in a matrixed environment who must act as player-coaches – choose to perform urgent tasks with short completion windows instead of important tasks with larger outcomes.  Why?  It is a natural tendency and a way to feel more in control over days where you feel you have too much on your plate. The problem is that, when important tasks are pushed aside and left undone, meaningful and strategic productivity decreases. This is not good for you as a manager, for your direct reports, for the team, or for the business.

Read the 4 Tips to Better Manage Workload Now

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

How to be an Effective Player-Coach at Work

Times Have Changed COVID-19 has caused most leaders to rethink how work gets done. And not surprisingly, our clients are reporting that first-time and middle managers are being asked to do more with less. Especially when it comes to leading virtual teams AND getting specific tasks done themselves. What Exactly Is a Player-Coach at Work? The origin of the term player-coach refers to a member of a sports team who simultaneously holds both playing and coaching duties. In fact, the first six Baseball World Series were won by a player-coach and Bill Russell won two NBA titles as a player-coach for the Boston Celtics. Although the practice is mostly extinct in sports, many companies today expect their managers – especially their first-level managers – to be an effective player-coach at work. The Pressure to Do Both Many pundits believe that people can’t simultaneously perform both roles well. However, some corporations continue to believe that high performing and high potential employees can, at the same time, operate as an effective individual producer and people leader.  These hybrid player-coaches must straddle getting their own project work done while ensuring that their team performs at their peak. Wearing both hats at work is not always easy. The Top Challenge for People Managers Over the decades, we have asked thousands of people managers to list their biggest challenges. In the last thirty years, being a player-coach at work has been listed in the top five. When we ask managers to describe what being a player-coach means to them, they talk about managing project teams while also accomplishing project tasks, managing sales teams while also having a personal sales quota, and stocking store shelves while also serving customers.  While the practice of assigning players as coaches can create great efficiencies, it also poses unique challenges. You need to make sure that the player-coach model makes sense in your company and in each individual situation.

Read 3 Ways to Set Player-Coaches Up for Success

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

Leading Virtual Teams - The Top 4 Challenges and 3 Winning Strategies

We call them "Virtual Teams" but the only thing virtual about these teams is their cyber office. Otherwise, these teams are made up of real people solving real problems and producing real deliverables. 

These teams have some special challenges. If you are leading a virtual team, there are three dimensions of communication you need to know.   Distributed Teams are More Challenging Let's start with the problem. Why treat virtual teams any differently than other project team? What's special? Distance. This translates into four specific challenges: First, where's the informal communication that happens at the coffee pot or water cooler? "So tell me, Eric, how many of these kinds of projects have you worked on?" or "I have a few simple questions I didn't really want to raise in the team meeting - you know, I didn't want to look dumb, but..." Second, what are you going to do about that old rule of thumb that 75% of communication is non-verbal when the only communication you have is verbal or written? Now add that most teams hit headwinds and must rely on trust and commitment to stick together when the going gets rough. Can you build trust and commitment across time zones? Then there's the logistics: What time do you meet? And where do you keep the project's "stuff"? Three Winning Communication Strategies of Leading Distributed Teams Notice the key term is leading. Not organizing, but leading.  Former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, emphasizes that "leaders have followers." To be a leader of a distributed group of people that you don't see daily, you must be conscious of three dimensions of communication.

Read the Top 3 Virtual Team Communication Strategies Now

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

Project Team Toolkit

Do you need to get your team rowing in the same direction?

Recognizing that nearly all projects are accomplished through the concerted, coordinated work of project teams, effective project team leaders balance the art of leadership and the science of project management.

Whether your teams are made up of part-time volunteers or highly-skilled professionals, their productivity and success is dramatically affected by the relationships within the team and the ability to function as a cohesive unit.

Project teams have a special challenge: they come together for a temporary assignment in which they face a unique problem. Successful project teams build a positive project team environment and learn to work together to solve problems even in the face of conflict. 

This research-backed project team toolkit includes:

• The Critical Characteristics of a Great Executive Project Sponsor
• The Top 5 Warning Signs of a Bad Project Leader
• The 3 Keys to Successful Project Leadership
• How to Break the Resource Gridlock: Prioritize to Accelerate
• Must Have Tips for Getting the Project Resources You Need to Succeed
• Proven Strategies on How to Better Choose Between Projects
• The 6 "Get Right" Basics of a Great Project Kick-off Meeting
• The Top 4 Project Challenges Every Team Must Overcome
• 3 Proven Steps to Better Manage Internal and External Project Stakeholder Risks
• The Top 5 Warning Signs that Your Performance Environment May Be Destroying Your Project
• 20 Project Management Best Practice Templates
• 5 Steps to Get Your Project Team Pulling in the Same Direction
• How to Best Handle a Fixed Deadline when Project Scope is Unclear
• Top 10 Project Mistakes and How to Prevent Them

Get Your Project Team Toolkit Now

About LSA Global

Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

6 Ways to Foster Better Project Team Collaboration

Project teams that work collaboratively are high performing teams that consistently produce high quality results and care about the goals they reach together. 

And the reverse also is true...project teams that don't value and practice collaboration are low performing teams that miss deadlines, do not meet quality standards, overrun budgets and drain the company resources and energy. Have you taken a close look at the teams in your organization lately? 

There are many reasons why teams fail to work well together. Signs that they are struggling could vary from ineffective meetings to poor decision-making processes, from nasty turf wars to a practice of side-bar conversations that undermine trust. In today's world where so many initiatives depend upon team effort and success, you cannot afford to have teams that are stymied by conflict rather than greased by the oil of cooperation.

Granted, teams are larger and more complex in this global economy. Organizations depend upon many diverse, highly educated team members to get important jobs done. Team members come from different backgrounds, range across geographical borders and must connect virtually with previously unknown experts and often under an urgent and highly visible timeline. The challenge for teams and team leaders is huge. How can you successfully coalesce a global team, keep them focused on the objectives you have set, and count on their working effectively and productively together? 

Numerous studies point to the critical underpinning of successful teams...a pervasive feeling of trust.

We know that trust is the foundation of strong, positive relationships. Since all teams (not just project teams) are based upon relationships that work, trust must also be the foundation of strong, successful teamwork. Our research has uncovered six ways that you can establish an atmosphere that promotes trust among the players and set the team up to succeed.

Read the 6 Ways to Foster Better Team Collaboration

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

Assess the Health of Your Team

Is your project team set up to succeed? 

By most accounts, too many teams fail to meet expectations.  As projects become a bigger proportion of how work gets done, fundamental project management skills are becoming as essential for organizations as emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills. 

The highest performing project teams follow some common practices that set them apart from the pack.  Recognizing that nearly all projects are accomplished through the concerted, coordinated work of project teams, the technical and human factors required to succeed can sometimes feel daunting.

Whether the team consists of outside experts or internal professionals, their productivity and success is dramatically affected by the relationships within the team and their ability to perform as a cohesive unit pushing toward a common goal.

Successful project teams build a positive project team environment and learn to work together to solve problems even in the face of increased pressure and conflict. 

If you would like to know how you stack up to leading organizations in the areas of Project Management Environment, Project Definition, Project Planning and Risk Management, and Project Execution Best Practices, then this complimentary diagnostic is for you.

Assess Your Project Team Health Now

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

"Accidental Project Managers" - Project Management Is Not Just for Project Managers Anymore

There was a time when employees did "their job," and projects were managed only by experienced project managers who had extensive training in all the aspects of successfully defining, planning, executing and controlling projects. 

But times are different now.

• Respondents to a Blanchard survey stated that they spend as much as 50% of their time in a team setting. Yet 42% admitted to rarely, if ever, receiving any training to properly kick-off their projects.
• Up to 66% of organizations polled by the Society for Human Resource Management use virtual project teams.
• An Appleseed Partners poll found almost 30% of team leads are "accidental project managers" of which almost two-thirds have no formal project management training or certification.
• The pace of business has accelerated exponentially and many teams are operating in a 24/7 global economy.

At LSA Global, we see our clients committing a greater proportion of their time and resources to key projects and project teams. And, as more and more business gets done through projects, the need for project leadership and project team skills continues to grow. In order to succeed, leaders need to add another competency arrow to their quiver of leadership abilities...they need to know how to effectively lead projects and project teams. 

With more internal and external work being accomplished by co-located and remote projects teams, the need for rock solid project leaders and team members who can effectively define, plan, execute and control projects of all shapes and sizes has grown exponentially. The new competency often comes as a surprise for many leaders who don't consider themselves 'professional project managers,' a role often equated with Information Technology, a formal PMO function or Engineering. But professionals in every department - marketing, accounting, purchasing, and human resources, for example - are being affected by this new need for project management capability.  

The shift is driven by three easily observed factors: 

1. Organizational change is most often achieved by one or more projects. As projects become a bigger proportion of everyone's work, basic project management skills are becoming as essential as interpersonal communications, conflict management, team dynamics, and other foundational skills that apply to every professional.


2. Millennials are entering leadership roles, while Boomers are retiring. Flatter, more agile organizations are turning over the reins for small and large leadership responsibilities to a new generation of leaders who will spend most of their careers in teams navigating change. The sooner they sharpen their project leadership skills, the better.   


3. Innovation and V.U.C.A. (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) are pervasive challenges. Whether a company is driving disruption or reacting to it, innovation affects everyone. V.U.C.A. is a term used to describe the less predictable world most organizations face. Project management is a key capability for driving innovation and responding to 'a V.U.C.A. world.'

However, there is a challenge for those of us working with leaders to instill the basic tenets of successful change and project management. Since many managers, executives, and senior staff don't see themselves as project managers, they are leery of project management training, processes and practices that are bloated or designed for IT, construction, or engineering projects. And they rightfully reject training designed for passing the PMP exam. 

Read about Setting Non-Project Managers Up to Succeed

 About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

Benchmark Your Project to See Where You Stand

Up to 75% of projects fail to meet stakeholder expectations.  That is unacceptable to us and our clients. 

Knowing that successful projects require the concerted and coordinated work of committed project teams, knowing where you stand is imperative. Whether the teams are part-time volunteers or highly-skilled professionals, their productivity and success is dramatically affected by the project leader's ability to create the clarity required for the team to function as a cohesive unit. 

And project teams have a special challenge: they come typically together for a temporary assignment in which they face a unique problem. Successful project teams build a positive project team environment and learn to work together to solve problems even in the face of conflict.

If you would like to know how you stack up to leading organizations  across 27 key performance indicators in the areas of Project Management Environment, Project Definition, Project Planning, Risk Management and Project Execution Best Practices, then this complimentary diagnostic is for you.

Benchmark Your Project Now

How do you stack up against other leading organizations?  See all Health Checks.

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

5 Steps to Get Your Project Team Pulling in the Same Direction

Is your project team scattered all over the map? Do they know where they are going and how they are going to get there?

The more important, complex and visible your project, the more critical it is to have all the team members working together and pulling in the same direction. 

Most project leaders face at least one of the following challenges during a project: 

• Resource Limitations. Just as the project has a start and a finish, so does the project team. The more unique the project, the greater the difficulty in assembling and keeping a team with the appropriate skill and style mix. 
• Scope Creep. Project scope rarely stays the same over the course of a project. Things change and projects need to change accordingly. Scope is controlled by ensuring there are clear agreements (in a way that aligns with your organizational culture and before any new work begins) on the implications of requirements, specifications, objectives, timelines and costs. 
• Politics. When "politics" interferes with project progress, we usually mean that the organization's authority structures and influencers aren't properly supporting the project. Given that projects often require cooperation and participation across functional boundaries of an organization, this is not surprising.
• Weak Estimating. Because estimating requires forecasting the future, resource requirements, costs, timing and deliverables are often built more on assumptions than facts. Even projects that are similar to previous efforts can be difficult to forecast because most projects contain so many variables. 
• Poor Communication. If people are the engine of accomplishing work, communication is the heart of true productivity. Projects that require cooperative, concerted effort from temporary, cross-functional project teams, require teams to re-create basic communication channels on every project. 

To overcome these common challenges, each project team needs a clear road map to follow. You, as project leader, are in charge of seeing that there is a step-by-step plan to drive you all efficiently and successfully toward the project goals that will deliver the desired business results for your key stakeholders.

Read the 5 Steps Winning LeadersTake to Ensure Each Project Team Member "Gets It"

What Your Project Team Can Learn from Weight Watchers

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

Project Health Check Is Your Project on Track?

Project management is both an art and a skill.  Effective project leaders are worth their weight in gold. Weak  project managers create unnecessary angst, waste and churn.

A recent project post mortem at one of our growing high tech clients reinforced that the best project managers consistently excel at simultaneously managing results and relationships while meeting or exceeding ever-changing stakeholder expectations. Are your project leaders and project teams:

1. Getting high quality results?
2. Forming and maintaining meaningful relationships?
3. Setting and managing expectations?

Getting High Quality Project Results

The desired results of any project must be clearly understood at all times by the project team, the project sponsor, and all key internal and external stakeholders.  The more complex the project, the better the project team must be at dealing with the inevitable changes in direction, scope, resources and timing.  That means quickly understanding changes, communicating the implications and making wise decisions with those who matter most. 

Here are three warning signs that the desired results may not be as clear, believable or implementable as they need to be to set you and your team up for success:

• The business rationale for the project is vague, tactical, debatable, or was created in a vacuum.
• There is some ambiguity between customers, management, project managers, and the project team regarding what they want to accomplish and why.
• While people generally know what the project is trying to accomplish, it is unclear specifically how the success of the project is ultimately to be measured.
  

Forming and Maintaining Meaningful Relationships

In this time of cross-functional, cross-cultural, and cross-global teams, relationships are the heart of getting project work done.  Because project teams are usually made up of people with different skills, backgrounds, agendas, assumptions, and reporting relationships, project leaders must be adept at influencing others to agree on goals, roles, processes and conflict resolution. Influencing a team requires solid preparation combined with a willingness to use a variety of leadership behaviors based upon the situation. 

Here are three warning signs that your relationships may not be as strong as you need them to be meet or exceed expectations:

• It is unclear who all of the internal and external project stakeholders are and what they care most about.
• Project team members or stakeholders' responsibilities and jobs are unclear, confusing, or shifting without explicit recalibration.
• Formal and authoritative sponsorship of the project is unclear or in name only.

Setting and Managing Expectations 

Stakeholder satisfaction is directly correlated to how well you and your team set and manage expectations along the entire project life-cycle.  This is accomplished by proactively maintaining frequent and consistent communication with key stakeholders about project status, issues and satisfaction to-date.  Project team members need to know how and when to communicate any changes, decisions or issues. 

Here are four warning signs that you need to better manage expectations:

• While communication occurs, there is no formal strategy or plan to ensure that information gets to the right people, at the right time in the right way.
• Internal and external stakeholders are often confused regarding direction, decisions, coordination, status, or information.
• Large or small changes are often implemented without going through a formal review process to determine the value or impact.
• Tasks are not consistently or clearly measured to ensure that the team meets cost, quality and time success criteria.

Assess the Health of Your Project

Learn More About Project Post Mortem Best Practices 

About LSA Global

Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned