I am sure that some of you reading this will wince at the mention of a RASCI. Like all management tools they are useful to a point.
To help you with your next RASCI, here are 3 tips that have served us well.
Tip 1: Definitions, they are your friend.
Apply a consistent set of definitions:
- Responsibility: the person / function / entity who has to do it, the “doer”
- Accountability: the person / function / entity who has ultimate ownership
- Support: the person / function / entity who provides support resources, usually a functional specialist
- Consult: the person / function / entity who must be consulted before a decision or action is taken
- Inform: the person / function / entity who must be informed that a decision or action has been taken.
Tip2: Joint accountability is not a thing.
Whilst for many of you this is a statement of the bleeding obvious, it can sometimes take a moment or two to understand who is ultimately accountable. For us it is a simple question, ‘who is going to get the phone call if it all goes to hell in a handbag’?
Tip 3: It is a conceptual design tool, not an analytical model.
A RASCI is a key part of our organisational design process, we use it as a conceptual framework to understand:
- How work flows across an organisation / business unit?
- How efficiently or inefficiently this work is being executed, for example, does a process currently have a long list of parties / entities that need to be consulted?
- Where are the potential bottle necks, for example, is your CEO or General Manager ultimately accountable for signing off all travel requests?
- What is the potential span of control for different teams or roles?