Episode 341: R.A.C.I.
In this episode, Fiona shares a valuable framework that can be a game-changer for businesses. This framework helps establish clarity and accountability within teams. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The importance of clarity and accountability in team-based work
How to apply the RACI framework to various aspects of business
The role of RACI in preventing confusion and conflicts within teams
Tips for effectively using the RACI framework
Real-world examples of how RACI can be implemented in business scenarios
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Welcome to episode 341 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today is a quick tip episode, and if you've been around, you'll know that that's where we share a tip, tool, or tactic that you can implement immediately. Today I am going to be sharing a framework, one that I have shared countless times with clients and one that I think is important, particularly if you are doing teamwork, if you have even remote people or freelancers that work with you, just to make sure everybody is clear. Before we get stuck into that, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this beautiful land in which I record this podcast, and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
As I mentioned, this particular tool is important, particularly if you have a team you work closely with other people on various parts of your business. That team may not necessarily be employed by you. It could be an agency, freelancers, contractors, or whoever you're working with. I have worked in-house in a lot of big teams in my career, and I've also managed teams. I've also come in as a consultant to big teams. I work with many small business owners who are CEOs or MDSs of large companies, and I work with them as their coach. One thing that can come up, and if you have ever worked in a team, you may well be nodding along as I say this, is that there can be a blame game for one of a better phrase when something doesn't get done in relation to a project or campaign.
I come from a largely marketing and brand background. This happens more than people want to admit, particularly when it comes to, comes to marketing, and particularly when the marketing isn't bringing in the results that people expect. There can be that they weren't doing that. I thought that was so-and-so's job. I wasn't responsible, I'm not the marketing manager. There are a lot of things being thrown at different people and that can be difficult. But the biggest thing is that quite often there hasn't been clarity around who's responsible for what, and who needs to be informed. Who is being consulted about this? Where does the buck stop? As the leader of your small business, as the owner of your small business, quite often the buck does stop with you.
But if you have decided to invest in outside resources, outsource certain things, or even invest in full-time staff or casual staff for your business, it can be very frustrating when things go wrong. There hasn't been a clear path set out for who is responsible. It's not about having a blame game, but it's about being as clear as possible. Likewise, that's a negative example, but there are also amazing examples in business. If you are hiring teams, if you're outsourcing things, and maybe you're not in the detail of this, sometimes you don't know who did this work and I want to praise them, I want to incentivize them or call that out publicly and acknowledge the amazing work that they've done, but I'm not sure who did what. One framework that can help with this is RACI.
It can also be known as a Cairo. It's an acronym. I've always thought of it as RACI, whatever you wanna call it. But Cairo is basically the same thing. It's CAIRO just like Cairo in Egypt. What is a RACI? It's a matrix. If you imagine a table as such, and in the first column you've got all the tasks or responsibilities of something, or if you're planning a campaign or if you're doing something big in marketing, you might have the different areas of marketing. You might have social media, public relations, traditional media, analytics, website, or whatever the different areas of your marketing are. This could be on your next collection, it could be anything. You could have one for a design team, one for your marketing team, and one for an HR team.
But you've got this table. In the first column, you are going to list out the sections of the team, such as what I've just said, PR, traditional media, collaborations, all the different parts of marketing or any other tasks or responsibilities. You can just list them out across the top. In the first column, you've got tasks and responsibilities or areas of whatever the department is. And underneath you've got all the different lines starting in that first column with what it is. For example, PR would be in the box just under tasks and responsibilities or areas following two tasks and responsibilities. In the following columns, you have either the names of your team or if you don't know them, the role that people are playing. Marketing manager, marketing specialist, marketing coordinator, agency, you have those things listed out in columns because essentially what you're going to then do is look at the task, look at the person or the title of the person and match it back.
Are they R, are they A, are they C? Are they I? What do they all mean? R is responsible and that is ultimately the person who's going to get the work done. It could be somebody in your team, or even if you are working with an agency, it may well be that there's somebody in your team who actually works with you, who is ultimately responsible for following up the agency, chasing the agency, getting this information from the agency, or maybe you don't have somebody in your team like that. You have outsourced whatever this is to an agency. Therefore there needs to be somebody, your account manager, who is ultimately responsible for that thing getting done. Let's say you had under your tasks and responsibilities, let's say analytics, and you have discussed as a team what that means.
It might be not just sending a report, but analyzing that report and sending suggestions on what needs to be changed according to that report. I'm not against agencies at all, but I have had numerous clients work with agencies. I still have clients that work with agencies and they send me the report to analyze. That's fine. If people wanna do that in coaching, that's their prerogative. However, I will often say, “Has the agency explained this report to you?” I can say that 90% of the time it is a no, which I find fascinating because a lot of the time people are charging a monthly retainer and if there's no explanation and people are putting that into your hands because they don't know how to do it, which is a lot of small business owners don't understand analytics, they don't understand reporting of social media or ad spend.
That agency, now I'm getting on my high horse, but should be analyzing that and giving it back. There's no point just giving a whole bunch of figures to somebody who doesn't even know what ROAS means. There are so many tools now there are Loom screens and so many screen recordings that you should be able to look at that report and go through it. Maybe it takes five minutes of screen recording to point out the big things. Or in that report having another column that says, based on this, here's what we're going to do. Here are the tactics we have devised based on the results that you've got from this report. I know I've gone slightly off, but the R is responsible. You may have analytics and then you have, like I just said, it's not just performing the analytics, getting the report written, but it's analyzing the analytics and then informing what needs to happen.
R is responsible. Under that task, if we just stick with analytics, you've got the first column, tasks, analytics, and then one of your columns going on the right of that would have like agency, and then you'd put R under D. If they're responsible for it, the A comes next. A is accountable, so this is the person who owns that, owns the fact that the analytics is getting done. Maybe the agency is responsible for doing it, or somebody else in your team is responsible for doing it. But the A is who is not in trouble all the time, but who's ultimately accountable for that. I'm thinking of that Beyonce concert that she did. I don't know if she said this or if it was just like a rumour, but when you watch one of her concerts, the lights didn't go on when they were supposed to go on.
Then she's singing, but it sounds like she's singing, “Somebody's getting fired.” That's often what we can think of. It's accountable, but accountable is who ultimately makes that decision and says, this work is done. I'm happy with this degree of work, it's done. I'm making sure that in this case, this agency is not just sending us a report, but analyzing the report, and all of that. That's A, it's accountable and it's just best to have one accountability person. One person has an A next to them for each task or department. You don't want to have two people that have this because this is where the lack of clarity comes from also its understanding. If anyone else looks at the rocky that you've created in another department, they can see, this is the person I need to go and talk to.
That's important, particularly as you scale and grow. You might have different departments, even if they're small departments, but the design team isn't talking to the marketing team, the marketing team's not talking to whatever team. You want to make sure that if I do need to go over and talk to somebody in that team, I know who I need to go and discuss this with. Who is ultimately accountable for this? Who is the decision-maker in that space? C is the next thing. You can have one person or multiple, whereas, with A, you just want to have one person. C is the person or the group, or in this case, an agency that is helping people complete this. They're not doing the work necessarily, but they may be helping.
For example, if you are the owner of a business, maybe you have employed somebody to do your marketing, but they will still need to consult with you, particularly if you are almost like the creative director as well. They will need to consult with you to be able to get your feedback to help them. Maybe they haven't done this particular thing before. That is a two-way communication between the people who are being consultants and the people who are responsible, or all three the R, A and C. You can put a few people with C on a particular line, but you can't put anyone you just want to have one A just want to make that clear, just one A. And then I, this is people who need to be informed. People or groups or whatever. Let's say your agency has found through the analytics that they're not just reporting, they're analyzing and giving you suggestions, has found that actually there's an error in your website, or they want to test or do some AB testing with your website, then who needs to be informed of that is the website developer.
You may have them in there as well. And just under I, as in informed, likewise, maybe you have like a finance person and the agency wants to take the same amount of money for ad spend, but they want to divide it up slightly differently, but it's still the same amount of money. It's not like it has to go right back to the drawing board, but they're going to inform the financial people. This is where we're dividing it up. We're actually, it's all going through meta or whatever, but we're gonna put more onto Instagram or maybe we're gonna take some out of meta and put it onto TikTok. That is an informed who needs to be informed because they're actually affected by this. If they're then running the numbers, they're like, “Why are we getting this bill from TikTok?”
It's figuring out who in the grand screen needs to be known as responsible, and who is ultimately accountable. Let's remember Beyonce at the concert, “Somebody's getting fired” and then C consulted and I informed so and sorry about my singing there. The RACI is a framework. It's important if you are finding yourself continuously feeling like there's no clarity on who is supposed to do what when it comes to anything from a marketing campaign to hiring processes to anything else in your business. It is a very simple framework. You can just look up RACI. If you just Google RACI Framework, you'll find a bunch of them. If you work with me, we have templates, so let us know and we'll just send you one. That is one important and useful framework that I found useful for years and years, even before I started my business. That is it for today's quick tip episode. If you want to find this in text format, you can find that over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/341. Thank you so much for reading. I'll see you next time. Bye.
