The Matrix

Recently I was at a peculiar corporate seminar. At one peculiar break when we were expected to network and socialize one of the attendees raised the issues of the corporate matrix. He went on to relate, how one of the rudimentary roadblocks for conducting business within his organisation was the fact that the organisational structure was designed to advertize fiefdoms that were responsible for the success of their own queer area or segment group which in some cases collided with the company’s overall vision, mission and goals. After all, this was in line with the less favorable advantages sited in some management or organizational behaviour text books when talking about the matrix organizational structure. Even I have been guilty of instructing these to my students.

The Matrix

The matrix structure ordinarily means you have more than one boss, as the reporting and hierarchy lines are many times blurred by the siloed structure depending on the distinct focus. The specific examples he raised within his company was around the establishment of an acquisition group whose sole intention was to acquire new clients for the entire company. This group reported into a discerned sales division, but horizontally to the other product and client coverage segments, thereby having more than one accountable leader, by organisational design and rendering that leader inefficient due to the multiple masters he or she had to serve.

At that peculiar discussion other players in the speech soon chimed in, citing the precise same phenomenon as occurring in their organisations and stating that it was a major impediment to conducting an effective and effective sales and retail function. Maybe, for that matter conducting or doing work in any function when the structure calls for a matrix may be disarming. Even on a very personal level I had to quit jobs because of the level of conflict I faced handling two bosses. Sometimes it’s like having to take sides when your spouse and mother do not agree!

My Take on the Matrix

This got me thinking. From the corporate exploration I have been conducting, the challenge for organisational matrix in huge corporations gets raised time and time again. However even when this is the case most organizations hug it with a vengeance.

I just want to say upfront that persons who believe that it is difficult are in fact full of shit.

We must all know how to manage a matrix environs as we were born into one.

My Explanation

When most of us are born, we mechanically have two managing directors namely other parents. We learn from a very early age, occasionally instinctively, what we may get from each parent. In a good deal of cases it is food, cuddles and quality time from one boss and it might be playful fostering and early-morning attention from the other boss. But we recognise they are in charge, when tested or challenged, as they provide the support and sustenance required for survival.

As we grow and fabricate more experiences we find that they too have bosses, better known as grandparents. They likewise provide aid and love but we seem to be capable to obtain sure things from them that we wouldn’t be capable from our own bosses. Maybe it is because they are the managing directors of our own bosses. Do you see parallels already?

Then there are other family players such as brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces. We learn through a mix of experiences and intuition what we may suppose from each of them and most times what we may get away with. They are share of the support structure of our development and we learn to utilize them, or not, as a resource to achieve sure goals.

Further development arises at school age when we begin to make friends.

We likewise experience our original association with matrix managers in teachers and spiritually through priests or gurus. Once again, through observation and fundamental interaction we get to know which ones will aid or just get in the way of our progress. I see further progress through into our late teens as we encounter lecturers and tutors.

Some even experience their initial real business manager as they commence a casual job, whether it is delivering newspapers, picking fruit in a farm or working at a local office as an office helper.

We also get to experience life as a client from both sides of the fence.

Consistently we are therefore learning and adjusting to personality, leadership and management styles that may or may not suit our needs.

By the time one reaches the world of business one has already received the best real-life and real-time training to operate in a matrix environment. Over time you have been gorgeous apt to innately manage a wide range of stakeholders, including vertical and horizontal hierarchal structures in executive and senior management such as colleagues, peers and collaborators followed closely by potential probabilities and customers.

So the message becomes very clear.

We go through our early development connections in a random yet structured manner to face life as we prepare ourselves for the survival proficiencies required to deal with society and business.

The Matrix

Set in the 22nd century, The Matrix tells of a computer hacker (Reeves) who joins a group of underground insurgents fighting the immense and powerful computers who now rule the earth. The computers are powered by humane beings…

By following up their debut adventure story Bound with the 1999 box-office smash The Matrix, the codirecting Wachowski brothers–Andy and Larry–annihilated any suggestion of a sophomore jinx, crafting one of the most exhilarating sci-fi/action movies of the 1990s. Set in the not too distant future in an insipid, characterless city, we find a young man named Neo (Keanu Reeves). A software techie by day and a computer hacker by night, he sits alone at home by his monitor, waiting for a sign, a signal–from what or whom he doesn’t know–until one night, a mysterious woman named Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) seeks him out and introduces him to that faceless reputation he has been waiting for: Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne). A messiah of sorts, Morpheus presents Neo with the truth regarding his world by shedding light on the dark mysteries that have troubled him for so long: “You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t recognise what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.” Ultimately, Morpheus illustrates to Neo what the Matrix is–a reality beyond reality that controls all of their lives, in a way that Neo may hardly comprehend.

Neo thence embarks on an adventure that is both terrifying and enthralling. Pitted versus an enemy that transcends humane conceptions of evil, Morpheus and his team will have to train Neo to believe that he is the chosen champion of their fight. With mind-boggling, technically progressed particular effects and a thought-provoking script that owes a debt of inspiration to the bequest of cyberpunk fiction, this is much more than an out-and-out action yarn; it’s a thinking man’s journeying into the realm of futuristic fantasy, a dreamscape full of eye candy that will satisfy sci-fi, kung fu, action, and adventure fans alike. Although the film is headlined by Reeves and Fishburne–who both turn in fine performances–much of the fun and excitement must be attributed to Moss, who flawlessly mixes vulnerability with tremendous strength, making other contemporary female heroines look timid by comparison. And if we were going to cast a vote for most dastardly movie villain of 1999, it would have to go to Hugo Weaving, who plays the feckless, semipsychotic Agent Smith with panache and edginess. As the film’s box-office profits soared, the Wachowski brothers declared that The Matrix is merely the firstborn chapter in a cinematically dazzling franchise–a chapter that is arguably superior to the other sci-fi smash of 1999 (you know… the one starring Jar Jar Binks). –Jeremy Storey

From The New YorkerIt has some of the pop-intellectual momentousness of the basi “Terminator,” but without the wrenching emotions of that movie. We are all living, it turns out, in “the matrix”-a seeming reality controlled by artificial intelligence and policed by vicious men in black. The few persons who are free hole up in a space capsule someplace above the earth, and Keanu Reeves, who is primary seen strapped down, with needles and other paraphernalia stuck into him and a disgusting little creature inserted through his belly button (unfortunately for him, he’s got an inny), ultimately joins the free and becomes a liberator. He fights the bad guys by flying through the air and engaging them in a rhythmic version of kung fu that has the clickety-clack excitement of tap dancing. The movie is nonsense, but it does achieve a brazenly chic high style-black-on-black, airborne, spasmodic. With Laurence Fishburne, who intones his lines rather than speaking them, as the leader of the free men and women. Written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

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95 of 100 persons found the following review helpful.
This is what Hi-Def schemes were made for…
By Alexander M. Walker
If you’ve seen The Matrix you recognise why the film community heralds it as a benchmark accomplishment in filmmaking. Just as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars set the bar for film particular effects, The Matrix came along and made us re-examine everything we thought a movie could do. Revolutionary, groundbreaking, mindblowing – these are all terms persons use to describe The Matrix. It’s surely all true, but up until now, what I’d cherished most regarding The Matrix was this: it packaged a Philosophy 101 course into a digestible Sci-Fi flick with a raging techno/rock/orchestral score and jaw-dropping action sequences. The Blu-ray release of The Matrix turns this scale on it is head bringing the action scenes to the level they were always meant to reach – now the film is superb all the way around.

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