Decision rights / role clarity
RACI Matrix
RACI maps every decision or deliverable to four roles: who is Responsible for doing it, who is Accountable for the outcome (exactly one person), who is Consulted before it happens, and who is Informed after.
It is the fastest tool for the two most common org diseases: decisions with three owners, and decisions with none.
- Problem
- Decision rights / role clarity
- Altitude
- Team to enterprise
- Effort to run
- Light
- Evidence base
- Established
Theory & origin
Responsibility charting grew out of 1970s project-management practice, also known as a responsibility assignment matrix, with variants like RASCI and DACI. The rule that gives the tool its teeth is the single-A constraint: exactly one accountable name per row. Everything diagnostic follows from violations of that rule. Multiple As mean a turf war waiting to happen. Zero As mean an orphaned decision. A column drowning in Cs means a consultation culture where nothing actually moves. Critics rightly point out that a RACI is a snapshot that drifts as the organization changes. It documents an agreement, but it does not create the trust needed to keep it.
Key components
The parts at a glance. Click any term for the full definition, a field example, and the common failure, in the model below.
Explore the model
| CIO | CFO | Ops Dir | Vendor | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cutover date | ||||
| Data-migration signoff | ||||
| Branch training plan | ||||
| Rollback decision |
Rollback decision: two A's. Exactly the turf war this chart exists to end.
How a consultant runs it
- 01 Chart real decisions and deliverables, not departments. "Approve pricing exceptions," not "pricing."
- 02 Enforce the single-A rule row by row. Every argument it starts is a conflict the organization was already having quietly.
- 03 Read the columns as diagnosis: a role overloaded with As, everyone consulted on everything, stakeholders informed of nothing.
- 04 Resolve the violations in the room with the people named. A RACI negotiated by proxy changes nothing.
- 05 Timestamp it and revisit it after every reorg. A stale RACI is more dangerous than none, because people keep citing it anyway.
When to use
- 01 After a reorg or merger, when nobody is sure anymore who owns what
- 02 Chronic decision gridlock: approvals with three signatures, or deliverables with no owner at all
- 03 Standing up cross-functional processes where handoffs keep getting dropped
When not to use
- 01 As a substitute for org design. A RACI documents ownership, but it cannot fix a structure that splits it in the first place.
- 02 For fast-moving teams whose work changes weekly. The chart drifts faster than anyone can maintain it.
- 03 Charted in the abstract by HR alone. Letters nobody negotiated change nothing on the ground.
Worked example
A scale-up's pricing exceptions take three weeks, and everyone blames everyone else. Charting eight commercial decisions exposes the pattern: "approve discount over 15%" has three As (the Sales VP, the CFO, and a legacy founder habit), while "update the price book" has none.
The workshop assigns the CFO as the single A with a 48-hour SLA, moves the Sales VP to C, and gives the price book an owner.
Exception turnaround drops to two days, and the founder's sign-off habit, the real blocker nobody would name out loud, gets retired explicitly instead of just quietly resented.
Common pitfalls
- 01 Multiple As per row, which just faithfully documents the ambiguity the tool exists to kill
- 02 Charting departments instead of decisions, which produces a wall poster nobody can actually act on
- 03 Consultation inflation: handing out Cs as diplomacy until every decision needs a summit
- 04 Filing the matrix away and never revisiting it, so the org runs on a chart that is two reorgs old
Sample deliverable
One real engagement, start to finish. Watch the numbers travel from raw input, onto the chart, into the finished artifact.
Input
- Cutover date1 A, correct
- Data-migration signoff1 A, correct
- Branch training plan1 A, correct
- Rollback decision2 A's, a problem
Process
| CIO | CFO | Ops Dir | Vendor | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cutover date | A | C | R | I |
| Data-migration signoff | C | A | R | R |
| Branch training plan | I | I | A | C |
| Rollback decision | A | A | R | I |
Each decision is charted role by role. Double-A cells (marked in clay) surface the gridlock instantly.
RACI: core-banking migration, BPR Nusantara
- Violationrollback has two A's, CIO and CFO
- FixCIO becomes sole A, CFO moves to C, 48h SLA
- Logevery decision recorded against the chart