Cisco and Organizational Structure

This article from the August 27th edition of The Economist discusses how Cisco is using project management tools and virtual technology to attempt to rapidly restructure the organization.  As has been the case with most (maybe all) large organizations that I have seen, its matrix structure grew unwieldy.  While the matrix (i.e., having different functional and business reporting structures with some interaction between the two) is great in theory, it is very difficult to pull it off in practice.  Typically, different parts of the organization focus on their individual incentives (not surprising) and so intra-organizational coordination becomes difficult.  The article claims that Cisco is using project management tools to overcome these problems.  It would be interesting to learn more about what they are doing and to see if it will work.


Economist Story on Cisco