Get RACI

“Clar­i­ty affords focus.” Thomas Leonard, businessperson/​founder of Coach U.

Mak­ing a fast deci­sion is impor­tant for suc­cess in busi­ness and in life.

It’s quite easy when two or three peo­ple are involved.

But when there are many, it’s hard to make fast deci­sions because either every­one wants to be involved — or no one — or some­times deci­sions get made with­out includ­ing the right peo­ple, and then we cre­ate all kinds of oth­er issues.

The solu­tion is to get RACI — a respon­si­bil­i­ty assign­ment mod­el for defin­ing and creating:

• Who is Respon­si­ble (does the work)
• Who is Account­able (who gets in trou­ble if the project fails)
• Who is Con­sult­ed (whose opin­ions are tak­en into account)
• Who is Informed (com­mu­ni­cat­ed with once the deci­sion is made).

And you can imag­ine if you have some­one who is meant to be informed, think­ing they should have been con­sult­ed or some­one who is only con­sult­ed think­ing they should be respon­si­ble, it can get real­ly messy.

One of the exec­u­tives in a com­pa­ny I recent­ly worked with, dis­put­ed a key deci­sion because he wasn’t part of the final deci­sion-mak­ing – which is nor­mal­ly those who are respon­si­ble and account­able. He was indeed con­sult­ed but not hap­py with the decision.

Peo­ple who are con­sult­ed don’t have to be hap­py with the deci­sion. They just need to pro­vide their input and views and let those who are respon­si­ble and account­able peo­ple fig­ure it out.

In anoth­er sit­u­a­tion, we had an exec­u­tive who was tru­ly account­able and didn’t want to con­sult any­one. He want­ed to make the deci­sion with­out input from others.

Anoth­er exec­u­tive felt she was 100% account­able but the CEO had a dif­fer­ent point of view. The CEO was actu­al­ly account­able, but the exec­u­tive was one of the key respon­si­ble people.

All these sce­nar­ios had the same thing: unnec­es­sary ten­sion, frus­tra­tion and delay because there was no clar­i­ty upfront about how the deci­sion was to be made.

As sim­ple as it seems — and I’m not sug­gest­ing you imple­ment RACI for every lit­tle thing, in every part of your busi­ness — the solu­tion for any project is to be clear who is Respon­si­ble, Account­able, Con­sult­ed, and Informed. And to make sure that every­one on the lead­er­ship team involved agrees, up front. You’ll save a ton of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­fu­sion down the road.

The Chal­lenge

Take a look at the most impor­tant project in your busi­ness right now:

• Is it clear who is Respon­si­ble, Account­able, Con­sult­ed, and Informed?
• If not, make sure it is — and that every­one is clear and agrees.