The RACI model is commonly used in business to define responsibilities and accountabilities for project, however it is not often used to ensure all responsibilities are covered after a major organizational transformation. A RACI—responsible, accountable, consulted, informed—can be used to track a process flow and hand-offs, and as the foundation to effect change in behavior.
Leaders can build a RACI model to highlight any gaps and overlaps in responsibility coverage and use the exercise to launch a discussion on appropriate segregation of duties, span of process control, and highlight any bottlenecks that may be preventing the organization from being as lean and effective as possible. In this way, the RACI can be used to articulate an end state vision and provide a road-map for getting there.
Recently a client asked for support to identify whether the transformation undergone by the organization had created any gaps or overlaps with respect to roles or responsibilities among his direct reports. The considerable change undergone by the organization led to the executive to focus the RACI model development on the following three key objectives:
▫ Clarify end-to-end responsibilities, re-enforcing hand offs between functional areas;
▫ Enable responsiveness between the organization and its clients, as well as internally; and
▫ Ensure ownership of all responsibilities and key processes within the organization.
The organization’s leadership team, representing the roles on the RACI, is comprised of new and veteran employees. As in many other organizations, some functional responsibilities evolved instead of being actively planned. This evolution of responsibilities into different areas resulted in duplication of work, confusion around which department is ultimately accountable and/or responsible for various functions, and disagreement around what the end-state should look like. The business case for using a RACI to create a comprehensive view of a clearer end-state derives from the current-state impacts below:
Unfocused activities: By focusing on the wrong activities the group is not harnessing the appropriate resources or effort to deliver effectively
Higher costs: Duplication of effort illustrates organizational inefficiencies resulting in a higher cost to delivering services
A leadership team at odds: A fragmented leadership team makes it difficult for the business leaders to understand the stakeholders who are responsible or accountable for particular activities versus those who should be consulted or informed.
Unknown risk: With the rapid transformation, there were functions that lacked ownership, leading to a potential gap in critical service delivery.
To address the impacts of the current-state inefficiencies and assist with building a transition plan to the end-state vision, we used an approach embedded in the top ten tips outlined below.
RACI Top 10
1. As with any other initiative, executive sponsorship is key to the successful creation and implementation of a RACI. Before an organization engages in the process of developing a RACI, leadership should outline the value of a RACI and how it will be used to clarify roles and responsibilities and effect change specific change.
2. Agree on a common definition. In an acronym laden business environment, RACI can sounds similar to other models and although many claim to be familiar with it, it is a tool often overused and misunderstood.
▫ “R” represents any role that contributes to the accomplishment of an activity. There can be multiple roles responsible for completing a process or activity, depending on the level of detail of the RACI.
▫ “A” represents the one role which has accountability. Think of accountability as where the buck stops.
▫ “C” represents any role which is consulted in order for the process to progress towards completion. A consultation should be thought of as bi-directional communication, where information is both given and received. There is no restriction to the number of “Cs” for a given process.
▫ “I” represents any role which needs to be informed. No restriction exists on the number of informed parties, but thought should be given to whether or not this is a key hand-off.
3. Use a best practice framework to get started and build a common set of processes. While the framework itself is not important, it is important to agree the scope and set of processes in the RACI. Using a best practice description of processes builds a common understanding among all participants. Using an industry standard distribution of responsibilities provides a baseline with which to start the conversations and jump start the process.
4. Document perspectives from each represented stakeholder. One on one interviews are a useful way to understand individual perspectives. Individual interviews enrich the process as some employees may have different styles, which are not always leveraged in a team atmosphere. Additionally, interviews allow the RACI aggregator to pull in data from other interviews, connect the dots, ask probing questions, etc. to get to the root cause of a gap or disconnect between people and groups. This is served by asking the questions, “What is working?” and “What is not working well?”