After years of documenting key processes, re-writing job descriptions and automating org charts, many organizations still struggle to have clarity and alignment around roles, responsibilities, and authority.  This impacts business processes, project execution and day to day decisions resulting in frustration, inefficiency and sometimes poor decision-making.  We have seen this issue in action with our clients across many industries.

Several years ago, we were working with a major candy manufacturer. One of the key triggers for calling us in was the country president’s growing dissatisfaction with his organization’s inability to make decisions without bringing problems to him. One example that happened to be on his desk when we talked was a Halloween candy promotion with their biggest retail customer, Walmart. We eventually talked his team through the situation and discovered the core issues – three different managers each thought they should make the final decision, and they could cite their job descriptions to defend their position: The account manager for Walmart who was responsible for “maximizing revenue at his account,” the VP of Marketing who was responsible for “maintaining and improving our brand equity across the country” and the CFO who was responsible for “implementing our pricing strategy across channels and key customers.”

As one of them lamented to us, “lots of people can say ‘no,’ but no one is sure who can say ‘yes’”. This is one of the classic symptoms of unclear accountability and misaligned objectives. So, how do we solve this problem? 

One approach for clarifying responsibilities is the RACI Matrix.