RACI+F - getting diversity, gettinging the right people into the room
— Transforming Organizations, Revitalizing Communities and Developing Human Potential
RACI+F - make sure you don't miss the critical roles for any project, big or small
The following is adapted from a 30 min. high-impact change tool webinar.
Click here for the webinar slides.
Ever had a supervisor tell you, "Well, you really should have talked to [x]!" - and dismiss your efforts because a key person or role was not part of the decision? Did you ever begin a project only to have to make a major revision, because a key constituency had been overlooked that brought new data to the table requiring adjustment?
RACI+F = R-responsible, A-accountable, C-consulted, I-informed, and F-facilitating; is a tool to make sure you don't miss the critical roles for any project, big or small. It ensures that all key insights and opinions are part of moving you forward in your change effort, because if you miss just one role - it can make all the difference.
Here is a little anecdote:
Two math-geeks in a high school in the rural midwest of the USA were tired of being called nerds and roped their math teacher into working with them to create a really cool afterschool program that would help fellow students wrestle with their math homework more successfully. It turned out the program surfaced some other math geeks that had been hiding their affinity for algebra and calculus. Not only did math homework completion and science grades improve, there seemed to also be some new camaraderie among the student body. Seemed like everyone was winning.
However, a few months into the program, the football coach [for those of you not from the mid-west of the US - the high school football coach is often considered a more influential position than high school principal] was trying to shut down the math club. Turns out nobody had told him about the afterschool program and now two of his linebackers were trying to skip weight room training sessions to participate. He had not been informed. He had not been consulted.
So where did RACI start? While it is not entirely clear, it has been suggested that the kind of Responsibility Assignment Matrix or RAM that RACI represents started at NASA in the 1970s - and supported the ‘in the moment’ decision making processes necessary to manage [wo-]manned space flight with clarity as to who was doing what.
To enable clarity and a successful launch of your project, consider these roles:
R - Responsible - Who will do the work? Examples include the people represented in the change teams, workstreams, and organizational functions focused on: strategy, operations, evaluation, communication, training & development, HR, accounting, etc.
A - Accountable - Who will delegate and approve? Examples here include directors, project managers and team leaders of the groups identified as R-responsible.
C - Consulted - Who needs to give input? These are typically not people who need to help manage the day-to-day, but those with data and insight to help manage the overall process. Examples are partners, subject matter experts, and internal consultants, but also, and often more importantly, users, customers, and/or the front-line staff that will implement project plans.
I - Informed - Who needs to be kept in the loop? These are typically people and entities that need to simply be aware, at times need to legally be informed and will sometimes surface additional individuals that may need to be R-responsible, A-accountable, C-consulted. Examples include top leadership, government bodies, community representatives, customers, suppliers, etc. Often it is also important to establish formal targeted channels or mechanisms that keep the RAC informed - those R-responsible, A-accountable and C-consulted without making that information sharing distracting.
Please NOTE: Increasingly, we find that being informed is not enough, as it often gives the recipient of the information a sense of “just being told.” Just like the football coach in our anecdote, who should have at least been informed - but who should really have been consulted - when people are given a voice - they are more likely to support your effort.
+F - Facilitating - Who will get us there? This is a recent addition to the acronym not originally part of the responsibility assignment matrices or RAMs. But it is often the most critical role you can identify.
RACI should help you identify all necessary data, opinions and insights, and hopefully the most important condition for innovation: Diversity!
Innovation only comes from diverse perspectives. Your +F - these are the folks responsible for leveraging that diversity, leveraging the multitude of voices and ensuring that they are heard. They set the stage for meaningful collaboration. It is often valuable to bring in an outside perspective to fill this role in the form of external consultants or trained moderators/facilitators. Other examples include steering teams, partner agencies, and design teams that may fill this role. At times technology may also fill this particular need as you leverage technology to help facilitate your process.
We should note that often one individual can have overlapping responsibilities. Someone who may have accountability for one aspect of your effort, may need to be consulted on another - and so forth.
A word of caution: Don’t use RACI to simply separate and force people into roles that potentially separate their insights. Some folks are ‘allergic’ to RACI, because in their professional experience it has been used to set up punitive systems, assigning responsibility that is then punished if not delivered at specific deadlines. This use of RACI will typically lack the +F completely and serve to separate rather than enable collaboration.
Check out NEXUS4change’s new webinar series of 30-min. high-impact change tool talks. Check our events page [www.NEXUS4change.com/events] for more on the power of Design Teams, the Change Formula, Collaborative Roadmaps, Appreciative Benchmarking and more.