I Heart RASCI: How to Build Trust and Make Decisions

Decision-making is one of the hardest things for an organization. Who makes the final decision? Who is involved in making a recommendation? What happens if you cannot gain consensus? When you’re in an organization of hundreds, thousands, or more, getting to decision-points can be paralyzing and undermine the speedy execution needed for growth.

Many years ago, I was introduced to the RASCI framework while working at eBay. The company was experiencing explosive growth and, with its growing ranks of employees, needed a way to be more intentional about decision-making. So, we rolled out the RASCI framework. As a product and marketing driven organization, we launched it with fanfare. We even gave it a nifty mascot: the RASCI Mongoose (I have no idea why we picked the mongoose, so eBay alumni, please comment away).

You can find thousands of articles on RASCI (A Google search shows 224,000 results), so in this post I’m sharing some tips and tricks for using RASCI in your organization. I’m a self-proclaimed RASCI lover, so I hope you enjoy these tips:

R = Responsible. This is the person who is responsible for making the decision or recommendation. Pro-tip: you’ll be tempted to have multiple people as the R in order to make everyone feel in control. Don’t do it. Once you have multiple ‘R’s, the power of the model diminishes. Remember, RASCI is about clarity in decision-making.

A = Approver. This is the person who is on the hook to approve a decision or recommendation. Just like with the R, it’s even more important to have one A. Sometimes you’ll see an executive ‘steering committee’ serve as the A. This might be unavoidable in decisions that have implications on multiple departments. Still, try to identify a single A on the steering committee. Pro-tip: for really complicated, cross-functional decisions where there may be a greater deal of political pressure, try to have a model where the R doesn’t report to the A. Why? Because the assumption is that managers and direct reports are already aligned. So, if you architect the decision-making framework for multiple departments, then more people have a deeper stake in the outcome. More skin in the game, as they say.

S = Supporters. These are all the people that are directly involved in getting to the decision point. Typically, this is the R’s core team working on a project. The distinction between the S and the C (see below) is that Supporters are actually doing work while Cs are more passively involved. Pro-tip: Rs should create an environment where Supporters are confident that their voices are being heard and are helping inform the final decision and recommendation. This means that listening is critical to the success of the R.

C = Consultants. These are all the people that the core team should consult with before making a final decision. Depending on the complexity of the project, there can be a lot of Consultants. Pro-tip: Map out all of your Cs before you start the project. Think of all the people who have a stake in whatever decision or recommendation you are ultimately going to make.

I = Informed. These are all the people that need to be informed of a decision once it is made. I sometimes forget about these people, but it’s a big big mistake to do so.

RASCI enables trust between teammates in order to make decisions.

OK, a few final pro-tips that apply to the entire framework:

1. Create your RASCI before you start a project. RASCIs created midway through a project often don’t work because people’s disagreements about the decisions get entangled in disagreements about who should make them. You might as well hit the reset button on the project itself.
2. Escalation is A-OK. For some strange reason, many people are trained to believe that conflict is bad and that escalation is a sign of failure. It’s not. One of the great things about RASCI is that it creates a healthy path of escalation, a path that everyone agrees to. Key to this escalation is transparency: If there’s disagreement, it’s the responsibility of the R to make sure the A understands who disagrees and why they disagree.
3. Listen, learn, and lead. RASCI is not a replacement for leadership. RASCI is a framework that engenders trust between all of the participants. The role of the R is to listen to all the supporters and consultants, to learn and adjust when disagreement occurs, and to lead the team towards a decision.

I end this post with what I said at the outset: Decisions are one of the hardest actions for any organization. Failure to make them effectively can create logjams that slow down your company and create a negative, thrashy environment. RASCI builds a common compact for how decisions should be made, which ultimately creates the trust in your company’s ecosystem needed to fuel innovation and growth.

PS: Got any other RASCI pro-tips? Comment on them here.