The joy of my job is that part of it is to go away and research things that my clients don't have time to because of their jobs. A couple of years ago I noticed that the challenges of working in a matrix were coming up more and more often and the research I did next became this book. No book is written alone, of course, and the following people, in particular, were kind enough to not only give up their time and expertise to be formally interviewed to help me consider what it meant to work in the matrix and the solutions – they also agreed to be named:

Jamie Foust, Kroshina Rodrigues, Sean Murphy, Tony Kelly, Keith Carrol, Kashif Arbab, Florian Dubaoi, Paul Eid, Gavin Maxell, Rob Maddock, Priya Sarma, Samra Haboosh, Muhra Al Ali, Simon Baig, Roger Daynes, Hannah Bradley, Steven Greenfield, Abdirazak Suldan, Brett Preston, Yves Aubourg, Nick Fisher, Sean Kelly, Andrea Studlik, Assaf Al Qureshi, Samer Khalidi, Dave Tredinnick, Ingrid Flores, Dave Michalski.

And then there are the people who have helped me along the way either from near or far. They are far too many to mention but include Peter Burditt, Betty Sugarman, David Bradford, Juan Algar and Harry Hanscomb.

A number of people kindly offered to read the various drafts along the way and those who were unlucky enough to be taken up on the offer included Monica Amorose, Katharine Birbalsingh, Martin Braddock, Dorota Lewis, Mike Cunningham and Harry Hanscomb.

I'd also like to thank the whole team at Wiley who were very patient and gracious with special mention of Matt Santaspirt.

Writing a book takes time and my parents, in particular, didn't grumble about only getting a short time with me on their 40th wedding anniversary so thanks, Mum and Dad!

I was lucky enough to be able to write sitting looking at the beautiful lagoon in Sri Lanka and Elle and Dee deserve a special mention too as their wilful puppy behaviour provided plenty of fuel for the procrastination engine this book turned me into!

All of the mistakes are my own of course.