Responsibility Charting
Responsibility Charting helps to clarify who is responsible for what with respect to various decisions and actions. It is a simple, relevant and effective technique for improving team functioning and ensuring clarity of responsibilities during a change process.
A responsibility charting session can quickly identify who is to do what in relation to new initiatives, as well as helping to pinpoint reasons why previous decisions are not being accomplished as desired.
Responsibility charting is a good intervention to use to:
- improve the task performance of a team with their existing work.
- to clarify roles and responsibilities before, during or after a change process.
It can also be particularly useful where decision making is embedded in a complex committee structure as the tool can be adapted to indicate which committees or interest groups need to be involved in approving change and which need to be kept informed
The first step is to devise a Decision Matrix form. Down the left side list the decisions that are at issue. They may be decisions relating to policy and procedure or to the practicalities of implementation. Across the top fill in the actual and/or potential actors who are relevant to the listed decisions.
The next step is to agree the definitions of behaviours associated with the decision making process. A typical set of terms is:
A = APPROVE a person who must sign off or veto a decision before it is implemented or selected from options developed by the R role; accountable for the quality of the decision.
R = RESPONSIBLE the person who takes the initiative in the particular area, develops the alternatives, analyses the situation, makes the initial recommendation, and is accountable if nothing happens in the area.
C = CONSULTED a person who must be consulted prior to a decision being reached but with no veto power.
I = INFORMED a person who must be notified after a decision, but before it is publicly announced; someone who needs to know the outcome for other related tasks but need not give input.
DK = DON'T KNOW
A blank indicates no relationship.
| Actors | ||||
| Decisions | ||||
The tool is similar to the RAEW Analysis used in Process Review and can indeed be used as part of a continuous improvement approach to reviewing institutional decision making processes.
