A recent study in Harvard Business Review shows that “65% of all projects fail”. What derails most cross‑functional projects isn’t a lack of smart people or good intentions; it’s a lack of agreement on time. One function thinks “end of month” means the last business day, another assumes it means “sometime in the next four weeks,” and a third is quietly working to a board meeting that no one else even has on their radar. The plan might look solid on paper, the RACI might have every box filled, but without explicit deadlines the team is still operating on different clocks. The research shows that clarity of ownership plus clarity of timing equals better execution.
What is “temporal understanding”?
This work shows that teams perform better when they build shared temporal understanding, a common understanding of which deadlines exist, how fast the team should work, and how work is sequenced over time. In practice, this means explicitly agreeing on milestones, interim due dates, and timing expectations instead of letting each function or individual run on their own implicit clock. Cross‑functional teams, which are already juggling different departmental norms and priorities, are especially vulnerable when this temporal alignment is missing.
And as the research on temporal diversity in teams shows, when people bring different pacing styles and time‑urgency preferences into a shared project, those invisible differences quickly become missed handoffs, rework, and conflict—unless we manage time as deliberately as we manage scope and resources.
That’s why adding deadlines to every project plan—and to every RACI chart in particular—is not a cosmetic upgrade; it’s a structural one.
Every R Needs a Deadline
The R’s in a RACI chart represent the tasks/activities – these are the components that make up “milestones” which occur when a certain amount of the work has been accomplished. A strong RACI lays out the tasks and activities in chronological order, so this becomes your critical path, and can be used to create a Gantt Chart.
Every “A” Needs a Deadline
Our RACI 2.0 defines the “A” as Approver, defined as the person who makes a decision. A healthy RACI calls out decision deadlines explicitly. Project delays are often associated with missing the time-to-decision metric, which first needs to be isolated and measured. Notice the difference between, “Marketing is responsible for the launch messaging” to “Jamie is accountable to approve final launch messaging by June 5.”
Every “C” Needs a Deadline, Too
The “C’s” in a RACI are the stakeholders who need to contribute their expertise to the project. At various times, their input is critical, and they may hold up the project if their input is required. In complex environments, there may be MANY stakeholders – think about university faculty. Assigning a “review and comment” period with a start and end date is best practice. It allows people to see where their input will be included, it allows them to block time for review, and it sets a deadline for their input.
Remember that “C’s” by definition can and often do disagree with one another. Once all of their input is received, the person with the “A” then decides which opinions to incorporate into the final outcome. (And which opinions to graciously ignore.)
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Are You a Strong “Temporal” Leader?
If you lead or participate in cross‑functional initiatives, you’ve probably felt the difference between a project that has real “temporal leadership” and one that doesn’t. Temporal leadership isn’t about micromanaging calendars; it’s about giving the team a shared rhythm: reminding people of upcoming deadlines, aligning dependencies across functions, and building in contingency buffers so one late deliverable doesn’t cascade into a crisis. Academic studies show that when leaders actively coordinate around time—through check‑ins, deadline reminders, and explicit sequencing—teams with very different time styles actually perform better, not worse.
We recommend creating structured debriefs after major milestones (“Where did we meet and fail to meet our deadlines? What caused that? What will we do differently next sprint?”) to reinforce learning and help the team continually recalibrate timelines, rather than quietly lowering expectations. Embedding these conversations into your RACI review cycles turns the chart from a static artifact into a living feedback loop.
If you’re wondering where to start, keep it simple: add one more column to your existing RACI. For every task or deliverable, alongside Responsible, capture “Target date.” For every decision marked for an Approver, assign a deadline for that decision to be made. For every stakeholder to be consulted, assign a start date for review and a deadline for input.
In the end, adding deadlines to your project plans and RACIs is about respect—for your stakeholders, for your colleagues in other functions, and for the work itself. Deadlines, when used thoughtfully, don’t just create pressure; they create focus, priority, and coordination. The research is clear that teams who explicitly align on time—who agree not just on what they’re doing and who is doing what, but exactly when it needs to be done—consistently execute better, especially in cross‑functional settings where no single leader controls all the work. A RACI without deadlines is only half a tool; give it a timeline, and you give your team the temporal clarity it needs to deliver.
