A bottom-up approach to address the ownership challenge for e-commerce teams within large organisations (RACI)
A very interesting case came knocking on our door recently, when we were asked to help the e-commerce cross functional team of a multinational organization to better structure themselves, in order to win in e-commerce.
Every company and every team has its own Team Operating System (OS) to communicate and drive results. This system is basically the sum of the team’s key principles (the purpose and values) and practices (how it communicates, aligns, decides, etc). More often than not, this Operating System is not intentionally designed and its elements are not necessarily connected to each other. But it still exists. Due to the above reasons, and many more, we usually observe that in many cases, the Operating System of a team does not serve its purpose and does not help the organization compete effectively.
The Business Case
In our case, what we had in our hands wasn’t exactly the so-called traditional cross-functional e-commerce team. We actually handled roles coming from different teams, but with no clear visibility on who is doing what, or very structured progress tracking routines between them. Also, the success story for e-com was not absorbed in the most efficient way by all. But most importantly, the e-commerce workflow was not everyone’s priority, but rather one out of the many responsibilities that each one was handling during their day to day. All of the above made it seem even harder to build connections between the different members and to optimise their collaboration in order to excel in e-commerce.
Apart from the above, we also had new cross-functional roles added to the e-commerce ecosystem, and once again it was unclear what their purpose was or how they connected with the rest. These roles were also taken over by new people joining the company, who were trying to figure out their responsibilities, while onboarding themselves to a whole new environment.
After having some interviews with key stakeholders and the critical role-holders of e-commerce, we identified that there was a huge need to clarify the ownership and critical activities of e-commerce’s operating system, and to give everyone clear visibility and alignment.
That’s when we concluded in our challenge statement →
The Solution
As we believe that top-down approaches rarely engage people to resonate with a vision and way of working, we worked very closely with the core team in order to tackle our challenge. We wanted to enable them to come up with their own solutions and bring ideas on the table that would make sense for them. This way, we would ensure not only commitment throughout the project but also engagement for the solution in the future. The way that we structured our approach was based on 3 key steps which are briefly described below.
Step 1: Clarify the critical activities for e-commerce
We realised that the first step of our work would be to see the big picture and understand the critical activities that e-commerce should consist of. Therefore, we started by mapping out all of the activities that were currently running for e-commerce and then analysing the gaps between existing and missing activities. Once we conducted our gap analysis, we were able to distinguish and conclude the critical activities for e-commerce (i.e. the work that needs to be done in order to win in e-com).
The outcome of this stage was very valuable for the next phase. It actually became our stepping stone and helped all the different roles understand the whole ecosystem of e-commerce. Now, each person’s work was more visible and made more sense. It was also a huge opportunity for the team to exchange knowledge, engage into conversations about their roles and responsibilities, and understand how their work is connected to the big picture.
Step 2: Tackle the accountability challenge using the RACI methodology
Now that we knew what needed to be done, we also had to decide who was going to make it happen. After clarifying all the critical activities for e-commerce, our next step was to solve the accountability issue. That’s when the RACI methodology came into the picture.
RACI is an acronym that stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed. Each letter in ‘RACI’ represents a level of task responsibility within a project. It’s a very simple and effective approach used to define and document project roles and responsibilities into an organization’s project life cycle. In our case, we used it to clarify the e-commerce role’s responsibilities and ensure ownership and buy-in between the different counterparts. In a glimpse, here is how we implemented it:
We started by mapping out all of the involved roles for e-commerce, in order to get the big picture. Then, we proceeded with creating our structure. Our work was documented on a matrix, vertically presenting the critical activities that we concluded in Step 1, whereas horizontally we presented each RACI acronym in different columns. Each column would get filled in with the e-com role/s that would get assigned to each RACI accordingly.
The way that we did this, was by asking ourselves the following questions at each step:
Who will do the work? Which role should be responsible to complete the task or make the decision? This role will be marked as Responsible.
Who is the owner of the work? Which role should sign off or approve when the task, objective or decision is complete? This role will be marked as Accountable.
Who needs to give input before the work is signed off? This role will be marked as Consulted.
Who needs updates on progress or decisions but without being formally consulted? This role will be marked as Informed.
💡 Apart from the above, we were always taking into account the following:
- Success requires that there is only one Accountable role. The owner of the work should be only one, in contrast to:
- The Responsible role where several roles can jointly do the work — however, avoid having too many of them as it can complicate and slow things down.
- Regarding the Consulted role/s, don’t forget that they are active participants and they need to be “in the loop” for their own purposes.
- The Informed role/s might not contribute directly to the task or decision, but they are not just Cc’d in an email. They need this information as it might affect their work too.
Therefore, after doing a lot of pre-work with the team, we dedicated a full day running a design sprint, in order to ensure that the conclusions were coming from them and that everyone was equally involved and aligned with our commitments.
Although our focus was to generate RACI’s per critical activity, we thought it would be valuable to also visualise the RACI’s per role, in order to understand the distribution of responsibilities that each role would take on. This is also an effective health check which will help you evaluate the successful implementation of the RACI’s by comparing the assignment of responsibilities between the different roles.
Last but not least, in order to help the critical roles of e-commerce keep track of their responsibilities and effectively own them, we built a document for each one of them, presenting their RACI in one page.
Now all they need to do is reach out to this file and remind themselves of their roles and responsibilities concerning e-commerce success!
Step 3: Governance model to ensure sustainability moving forward
Of course our work would not end here. Apart from rolling out the current activities and RACIs, we had to ensure the sustainability of this project in the future. This means that we collaboratively agreed on a governance model through which we would make sure that:
- The critical activities that we set are still valid
- Any new activities are added in our Master file
- The RACI’s are still up to date and any changes in responsibilities are implemented
We assigned an owner who would make sure that this review would happen. After that, we agreed on the frequency of the review cycle (to evaluate the validity of the RACI’s and activities) and made sure that everyone was aligned on how the review process would run.
Following the above, we redesigned our ways of working in order to co-create the routines and the workflows that the e-commerce team would commit to. This means that we connected the different elements of the team’s operating system, in order to make this whole work sustainable in the future.
🚀 RACI Learnings
Before you go, we always like to gather up our learnings after inspecting and adapting our solutions. Here are some takeaways that you can always consider in order to ensure that you bring your RACI’s to life (with clear governance and ways of working) and that they don’t end up being just a fancy deck kept in the drawer:
- Feel comfortable with empty boxes: Don’t stress about filing everything even if you don’t have a role for the RACI. Always think about whether all the stakeholders really need to be involved. Are there justifiable benefits in involving all the stakeholders, or is this just covering all the bases? I.e., are there too many “cooks in this kitchen” to keep things moving?
- Be careful with the C’s: Do all the stakeholders need to be routinely Consulted, or can they be kept Informed and raise exceptional circumstances if they feel they need to be Consulted? Too many C’s in the loop really slow down the project.
- Same with the I’s: It’s not a “nice to have”. If there are no extra roles that need to be informed, it’s okay to leave this one empty. Informed roles should have a reason to be informed, otherwise you’re just wasting time.
- Ensure buy-in: Does each stakeholder totally agree with the role that they are specified to play in this version of the model? Getting everyone’’s buy-in is very important for the success of the project and sustainability in the future.
To sum it up, the RACI methodology can be hectic and even chaotic at times. You will surely experience phases where not everything falls into place and the outcome might seem blurry. However, with patience, dedication and the team’s commitment, you will reach the point where everything starts to make sense and naturally connects with the rest.
For our very own e-commerce cross-functional team, having a clearly defined map of critical activities as well as RACI’s, ensures that everyone’s efforts and energy are aligned and focused purposely. If this work is implemented well, it can create powerful synergies that enhance and improve project outcomes as well as collaboration.
