Cindy

Droog

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December 4, 2008

Holy Morpheus! No One Needs to Work for a ‘Highly Matrixed’ Company

A few nights ago, I put the kiddos to bed and sat down to read a marketing industry publication. Perhaps I needed a little something to lull me to dreamland – and unlike sleeping pills – no trade pub I know of is actually addicting.

All of a sudden, it jumped out at me.

A “want ad” about a job I might actually want.

You see, while I am firm believer in keeping my career options open, I don’t have much time these days for opportunity seeking. And I’m happy in my current job. Still, I have a case of what I call “professional curiosity” that I’ve never been able to shake.

Attribute this to whatever you want. Why not? All the experts have. Call it the timing of my birth, proud Gen-X’er that I am. My latchkey kid past. Lack of respect for authority. Or watching my dad offer a lifetime of commitment to a steel mill only to be left standing in the unemployment line.

Whatever made me this way, I can’t help it.

So, I jump up, get on the computer, find the company’s web site and begin reading.

Two seconds later, this sentence stopped me dead in my tracks. ”The successful candidate should possess a strong sense of urgency and excel at building relationships in a highly-matrixed organization.”

I closed my browser and went to bed, laughing the whole way. For whoever wrote that job description clearly has my same sense of humor. She used the phrases “highly matrixed” and “sense of urgency” in the same sentence. Hilarious!

I have lots of experiences with matrices, and I know that nothing about them is urgent.

It started in seventh grade when I made a DNA matrix for a science fair. It took endless hours. Endless patience. Focus that hurt my eyes, my head and my butt. It was not fast. It was not nimble. In fact, if you’d tipped it even a little too far to the left, the whole thing would fall apart.

I also saw the movie The Matrix. You know, the one where a fake world is manufactured in order to make humans think that everything is hunky-dory and their energy and life isn’t being sucked out of them? Yep – that also sounds exactly like a highly matrixed corporation to me!

I’ve also worked for a client that developed matrices. These were hollow structures, made for shaping sand into whatever they wanted it to be. Pillars. Pump molds. Pieces parts. Stress on the words “hollow,” and “shaping you into what I want you to be.”

Again, what better way to describe a highly matrixed organization?

I’m a bit of a wordsmith, but even I can’t find a phrase strong enough to describe how turned off I felt about that job, and in fact, about that company.

Thankfully, the next job posting I looked at that night made me laugh, too – only in the good way. An agency hiring for the pet supply industry listed this as a qualification: “Must sit, speak and play well with others.” They ended their call for talent with, “If this is you, give us a bark!”

I laughed aloud. And had they not been located in a city I could never convince my husband to move to, I may just have responded with a little “bow-wow” of my own.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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This is Column # CD115. Request permission to publish here.