Red Pilling the Org Matrix for International Scaling

Red Pilling the Org Matrix for International Scaling

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The first step to get your team ready to scale? Remove legacy thinking around startup organisational design. No inventor, entrepreneur, explorer or lovable rogue made significant changes by following the herd. 

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As Peter Thiel’s play on the opening of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina goes: All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.[1]  

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As a founder or leader in a scale-up, you’re already attempting to do something different. Yes, your business will have competitors but there is only one you. You have never done this before and the world has never seen it before. Copying and pasting the scale-up growth playbook to your own organisation may seem easier and quicker at first glance, but later down the line, it can cause more problems. 

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For scaling success, go back to basics with structuring your team for scale. Here’s how:

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A report by consulting powerhouse McKinsey starts with an admission of defeat and lack of creativity. Their report of how to structure your organisation for global expansion has the subtitle: “The matrix structure is here to stay, but its complexity can be minimised, and companies can get more value from it.”[2]

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A 14-year-old report may not be the best place to start, but this is part of the problem. The fast-moving tech industry is often weighed down by groupthink and standardisation. You’ll be told that ‘if you want to succeed this is what your team should look like’. And even if we fast-forward 14 years, you’ll find screams of the McKinsey report.

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An article from this year by Team Asana explains what a matrix structure is and why it is beneficial.[3] Everyone reading this article will be familiar with a matrix structure and you may be a fan or not. The question you need to first ask yourself is, do the benefits outweigh the disadvantages?

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If a structure designed to make projects quicker and easier can be weighed down by unclear reporting lines, which duplicate functions and can create bottle necks, is it worth using?[4] Nothing is perfect in this fallen world. 

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As Heywood and Katz wrote: Global companies find structure difficult because there are no simple solutions – most global structural options create challenges as well as benefits.[5]

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Source: Team Asana.

However, if you’re trying to outweigh those challenges look outside the Matrix because it’s unlikely you’ll be able to avoid bottlenecks in an organisational structure which creates them.

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As author Peter F. Drucker writes:

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Take responsibility for decisions

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§  A decision has not been made until people know:

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§  the name of the person accountable for carrying it out;

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§  the deadline;

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§  the names of the people who will be affected by the decision and therefore have to know about, understand, and approve it – or at least not be strongly opposed to it – and

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§  the names of the people who have the be informed of the decision, even if they are not directly affected by it.[6]

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Drucker continues and tells the story of a client who fell from their leadership position in the Japanese market after entering a venture in which the new partnered used “meters and kilograms rather than feet and pounds – and nobody ever did relay that information.”[7]

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Never underestimate the, apparently, small things in your organisation. Never, ever, assume that everyone is on board or knows what to do if you have not communicated it, explicitly.

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One of the quickest ways to get people offside and to hinder progress is to make assumptions when you communicate. As project management guru and author Scott Berkun argues: Good communicators habitually clarify assumptions during discussions at key points, such as when commitments are made, and confirm them again before the deadline.[8]

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As the leader in your team, you’re the visionary for what you want to achieve. And you may think you’ve got a good rapport with your team and be able to communicate your vision, but you never want to assume. 

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Now you need to ask yourself, will your current structure and people scale?

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Local entrepreneur, Simon Beard, who founded Culture Kings and earned a $600m exit, wrote: Founder-led businesses don’t scale, nor do they sell. You need systems and teams…Learn how to find talent, how to train them, and replicate…Success comes from 20 people doing an 8 out of your 10.[9]

Who is doing the most work in your organisation? As the Pareto distribution teaches, 80% of the work in your business will be done by 20% of the people. Identify who those people are and make sure they are not being weighed down by unclear reporting lines or duplication. 

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Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross, in their wonderful book Talent, claim, “…[in the] U.S. output since 1960, by the best available estimates at least 20 to 40 percent of that growth has stemmed from the better allocation of talent.”[10]

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This may seem nauseatingly simple and repetitive but in the excitement of scaling globally you will be thinking about: branding, new markets; exciting trips to new locations, and the thrill of achieving something new. You do not, however, want to come undone because you didn’t fix a simple process, communication breakdown, or misallocation of people.

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Don’t be that company who doesn’t communicate that you work in feet, not metres.  

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References:

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[1] Thiel, Peter & Masters, Blake. (2014). Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. Penguin Random House UK: London, United Kingdom. p. 34.

[2] Heywood, Suzanne., & Katz, Roni. (2012). Structing your organisation to meet global aspirations: The matrix structure is here to stay, but its complexity can be minimised, and companies can get more value from it. From:

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/dotcom/client_service/Organization/PDFs/Structuring_your_organization_to_meet_global_aspirations.ashx Accessed 16th July 2025.

[3] Team Asana. (2025, February 22). What is a matrix organisation and how does it work? From: https://asana.com/resources/matrix-organization Accessed 16th July 2025.

[4] Team Asana. (2025, February 22).

[5] Heywood & Katz. p. 30.

[6] Drucker, Peter. F. (2006). The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Rights Things Done. HarperCollins Publishers: New York, United States of America. p. xvi.

[7] Drucker, Peter. F. p. xvi.

[8] Berkun, Scott. (2008). Making Things Happen. O’Reilly Media: California, USA. p. 181.

[9] Beard, Simon. (2025, June 26). LinkedIn Post. From: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/simonbeardck_after-building-a-team-of-1000-employees-activity-7340619227629834241-jmSw Accessed: 17 June 2025.

[10] Cowen, Tyler., & Gross, Daniel. (2022). Talent. St Martins Press: New York, United States of America. p. 10. 

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