Using RACI to Clarify Authority in Organizations

 From Insights from the Field: Lessons about Change in Complex Organizations By Elizabeth Blaylock

Cassie Solomon is the President of The New Group Consulting, Inc., a consulting firm focused on organizational change, and the co-author of the book, “Leading Successful Change” (Wharton, 2013 and 2020). Their RACI Solutions division focuses particularly on cross functional teamwork and decision-making culture.

RACI is a tool for specifying what roles key individuals and groups will play in a decision. If you don’t know anything about it, you can learn more here, and also download a free guide to RACI 2.0.

Elizabeth: Let’s start with a little context. Cassie and I both learned RACI decades ago at the same consulting firm, and we learned it differently than how it’s often taught today. It’s often described as a project management tool, but we learned it as an organization development tool. We used it to benefit teams that weren’t working well together and to clarify authority and accountability.

Cassie: We learned it from our mentor Tom Gilmore, and I went on to teach it at Wharton.

Elizabeth: It’s worth saying that you, Cassie, are really the RACI expert here—you’ve worked with clients all over the world with it. I’m more of a casual user. I bring RACI in when there is an obvious application, but I don’t use it extensively.

Cassie: Thank you, I do love the tool. One thing I often point out is that RACI is an old tool—created in the mid 1950s. We know the world has changed dramatically since then. I often use a Formula One pit crew as a metaphor for coordinated work: in the 1950s, a pit stop took close to 70 seconds; today the record is 1.8 seconds. Work has sped up, the need for coordination has intensified, and decision-making has to keep pace.

 RACI Needs to be Modernized  

That’s why we call our approach RACI 2.0—simpler, more agile, and much more focused. Most of the complaints people have about RACI come from using it in a way that made sense 60 years ago but doesn’t anymore.

Elizabeth: That’s a great place to start, because a lot of people struggle with RACI. I’m one of them at times. Where do you see people getting stuck, and how do you help them get unstuck?

Cassie: One big issue is scale. People create these enormous RACI charts—hundreds or even thousands of lines— arguing over them for hours. Everyone is exhausted, and when it’s over, the chart goes into a drawer, and it’s never used again. One client told me they would rather watch paint dry than negotiate a RACI chart.

My rule of thumb is simple: a RACI should almost never be longer than about 15 lines. RACI works best when it’s targeted at real pain points, not when it’s trying to document every step in a complex process.

Elizabeth: But decisions are complicated. Take something like buying medical equipment—it involves clinical expertise, engineering, finance, IT, facilities, regulatory issues among others. There are lots of nested decisions and stakeholders. How do you keep a RACI short without oversimplifying?

Cassie: Long RACIs usually try to include comprehensive process steps. RACI is actually much more powerful when you focus it on decisions. When organizations slow down, it’s usually because too many stakeholders think they have authority for an important decision. In RACI-speak, everyone wants an “A.” That turns decisions into consensus exercises, and consensus is slow.

To keep RACIs short and to speed up time to decision, I use what I call “nested RACIs.” If your decision involves a communications campaign, and Marketing owns that, you don’t need to list every marketing step—you just assign Marketing the role and let them sort out their internal RACI. That keeps the chart focused on the decisions that actually need cross-functional clarity.

Elizabeth: So this is starting to get at what you meant at the beginning when you said we learned to use RACI as an organization development tool, not a project management tool. You focus on using it for the decisions where leaders who report up through different parts of the leadership hierarchy have to work together.

 Is it a Process Issue or an Authority Issue?  

Cassie: Exactly. Project managers often get stuck because department heads all want sign-off power. Resolving that isn’t a project issue—it’s an authority issue. Someone higher in the organization has to decide, for example, that Compliance will be consulted, but doesn’t have to approve a decision. That single shift can dramatically speed things up.

Elizabeth: You’re talking now about using RACI as a way of clarifying authority and responsibility in an organization, not just implementing projects. How do you think about using RACI at an organizational level?

Take the free Role Confusion Quiz to see if it would be helpful to clarify roles on your teams.

Cassie: In an ideal world, organizations would clarify roles before projects start. Then every new initiative wouldn’t require renegotiating authority from scratch. In reality, the battles happen inside projects, over and over again.

What RACI does beautifully is make decision-making visible. We can see org charts and compensation plans, but decision practices are usually invisible. RACI gives us a shared language to surface and document who decides, who executes, and who advises.

And importantly, you don’t always need a chart. RACI works equally well as a language. If everyone understands what R, A, C, and I mean—and defines them consistently—you can negotiate roles on the fly. That’s where true agility comes from.

Elizabeth: But people often assume the org chart is the decision-making structure: if you’re unsure, your boss decides. How do you think about org charts and RACIs working together?

Cassie: I think of the org chart as the vertical organization. Inside most verticals, authority is usually clear. Where RACI becomes essential in the horizontal organization—cross-functional teams pulling people from different departments to get work done.

The higher you go in your career, the more horizontal work you do. And that’s where things break down. If every function wants to retain full decision authority, too many decisions escalate to the top. That’s slow, demoralizing, and unnecessary.

A critical leadership question is: how empowered do we want this cross-functional team to be? What decisions can they make without escalation? If that’s clear—and leadership sticks to it—teams move much faster.

Elizabeth: That connects to empowerment. Sometimes a boss says, “I want you to decide,” but then swoops in later and reverses the decision. How does RACI help with that?

Cassie: This comes up constantly. Empowerment isn’t binary—you don’t just give it or not give it. It’s developmental. Leaders need to be explicit about two things: the boundaries of the decision (guidelines, budget, constraints) and how often they want to check in.

If you’re clear about that upfront, you avoid the dreaded executive swoop months later. RACI helps frame those conversations, so expectations are explicit rather than assumed.

Elizabeth: And ultimately, even when someone else decides, the leader is still accountable.

Cassie: Exactly. That’s why I don’t buy the idea that there must always be one single “A” at the top. That describes the sponsor’s role. Realistically, decision authority often needs to shift location over time depending on the project phase. In drug development, for example, authority usually begins in research and development, then moves to regulatory and compliance, and ultimately to commercialization. That’s not chaos, it’s clarity - if you can acknowledge those shifts.

Elizabeth: One last question: what’s your top advice for someone using RACI?

Cassie: Don’t obsess over the chart. Pay attention to decisions. Audit how long decisions take, where they get stuck, and why. Most organizations are shocked by what they find.

RACI is just a tool—a language—to help you clarify roles and move faster. If it becomes bureaucratic or performative, it’s not doing its job.

Elizabeth: Exactly. It’s a means, not an end. If it helps you decide and move, it’s working. If it lives in a drawer, it isn’t.

Cassie: That’s the point. I don’t care whether people use RACI. I care whether they clarify roles. That’s what makes teams fast, resilient, and effective.