John Futterknecht and Marty Seldman, in their roles as executive coaches, certainly bring the required experience to bear for writing a book about how companies can best facilitate transitioning from the traditional hierarchal model of corporate organization over to a matrix organizational style. This has mixed results depending on your point of view. If you advocate this organizational style, Futterknecht and Seldman are preaching to the choir. Those, however, who remain unconvinced will likely find it lamentable that the authors simply accept this transition as a given, something set in due course to dominate modern business, and never provide a competitive path for those who want to retain a more traditional corporate structure.

Other voices will argue providing such a path isn’t in the book’s purview and that’s valid. They gear Leading the Global Matrix: Proven Skills & Strategies to Succeed in a Collaborative World towards those already sold on the idea of the matrix organizational style representing the wave of the future. It would likely rate as a significant digression if the authors promoted the time tested way of doing business as a viable alternative to riding that aforementioned wave. Their sell job for the matrix style of organization is masterful. Leading in the Global Matrix breaks down for readers the necessary steps and demands successful integration of the matrix style requires from interested corporate officers. 

I am impressed throughout with how well Futterknecht and Seldman make their case/ The absolute confidence they possesses in their design for implementing matrix style organization permeates the entirety of the book without ever reading as strident or cocksure. They have witnessed its efficiency born out through application and can be counted as converts to its cause. Their certainty on this point alone makes Leading in the Global Matrix a more bracing reading experience than it might have been otherwise. 

AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Leading-Global-Matrix-Strategies-Collaborative/dp/1948836491

It is to their credit they recognize throughout the book that contingencies may arise challenging one’s belief in implementing this new structure. I think this level of honesty is refreshing and mitigates any overt cheerleading they do on behalf of this organizational style. They set forth clear potential remedies you can put into place counteracting such moments. The brief duration of the book has its pros and cons as well. 

On one hand, it is a good sign that the authors never belabor the central points they make throughout the existing text. They are strong advocates for the matrix organizational style and any further crowing on its behalf might have seemed like overkill. Nonetheless, the book deals with fundamental changes about conducting business and, as such, some will feel the book doesn’t go far enough. Seldman and Futterknecht could have added another fifty pages to their book without upsetting its balance and deepened its impact. 

Leading the Global Matrix: Proven Skills & Strategies to Succeed in a Collaborative World, nonetheless, is an important work about modern business. It is impossible to ignore the vast amount of experience its authors bring to the subject and they explore its vagaries in a thoughtful and often eloquent manner. Despite whatever flaws the book may contain, it will nonetheless stand as an important work on the subject for some time to come.

Garth Thomas