A post by our guest editor, John Worthington.
The article Ditch the RACI. Fix the Job Description, by Dr. Janet Sherlock highlighted several problems with RACI matrices. In theory, they’re intended to clarify roles, but in practice, they often introduce more ambiguity.
The article advocates for defining accountability and decision-making upfront as part of the role itself, considering this far more effective and harmonious than attempting to sort out issues retroactively with RACI.
USM’s Approach to Roles, Functions, and Profiles
USM emphasizes a systematic and structured relationship between process ('what' needs to be done) and organization ('who' does it) to ensure predictable service delivery. A key concept in USM is the profile.
USM uses the profile as the combination of function and role. A profile is defined as a specific combination of tasks, authorities, and responsibilities (TAR) that an organization assigns to an employee in a team, supplemented with the required skills and knowledge. Every employee in a USM-based organization has a specific profile that specifies their tasks, authorities, and responsibilities. A profile can include multiple tasks.
USM simplifies the assignment of responsibilities using standard profiles differentiated by the principle of Separation of Duties, across both a process perspective and a line perspective. These standard profiles include:
- Process Manager: Specifies how a process should be executed and agrees with the line organization on that execution. Is responsible for specifying the process, setting up agreements, evaluating execution, and taking improvement initiatives.
- Line Manager: Specifies how the line (teams) executes the agreed processes.
- Process Coordinator: Steers the realization of calls using process activities and directs the work from the logical process perspective. In a process-based organization, the process coordinator plans and prioritizes operator activities.
- Line Coordinator (Team Coordinator): Directs the execution of the work from the hierarchical line or team perspective. In a team-based organization, the team coordinator prioritizes operator activities.
- Operator: Executes the assigned work (realization).
This systematic structure, built on clear profiles defined by TAR and the principle of separation of duties, provides a structured way to answer the "who does what" question upfront.
While USM states that a RACI model can be used to describe the relationship between the organizational dimension (functions, roles, profiles) and the process dimension (activities/tasks), the fundamental clarity in USM comes from the definition and assignment of the profile itself, including its specific TAR.
This direct assignment of specific tasks, authorities, and responsibilities within an employee's profile addresses the ambiguity that arises when people are unsure "where their role ends and another begins" or when "decision rights are fuzzy," --- problems highlighted in the article. By defining TAR within the profile, USM directly addresses the need to define accountability and decision-making upfront.
Importance of a Management System and Systems Thinking
The USM method itself is presented as a management system. Getting in control of organizational performance requires managing the components of the management system: people, process, and technology, and, most importantly, the interaction between these components. Managing people is acknowledged as complex and less standardizable than managing processes. However, people's behavior and organizational culture can be influenced through leadership and structured approaches.
USM's approach integrates these components. The process model defines the what. The profiles relate the the who to the what, assigning TAR to employees within the line organization. Routines, procedures, and work instructions combine the process, people, and technology to define what, who, and how. This integrated approach, where procedures and work instructions are derived from the non-redundant process logic by adding the 'who' and the 'how', embodies a systems thinking perspective – understanding how the different parts (people, processes, technology) interact within the whole system to produce outcomes (predictable service delivery).
This integrated management system provides the necessary context and structure for defining and assigning responsibilities. The confusion often associated with RACI charts can stem from trying to apply them in organizations lacking a clear, structured, and integrated definition of processes, profile, and their interaction.
USM's foundation of clearly defined, non-redundant processes and structured profiles with specific TAR provides the essential clarity for any mechanism defining responsibilities to be effective. The standardization of routines and workflows based on the USM process model and profiles ensures control and predictability of outcomes. Within this systematic structure, the "who does what" becomes inherently clearer, reducing the need for reactive tools like RACI to untangle pre-existing confusion.
Integrating Decision Scope within USM Profiles (TAR)
The Decision Scope concept advocated in the article, which defines Direct Decisions (owned by this profile, final call authority) and Adjacent Decisions (interacts with/contributes to, owned by others), can be directly integrated into the USM profile's Task, Authority, and Responsibility (TAR) framework.
- Direct Decisions: Decisions where a profile has "final call authority" align directly with the Authority (A) component of the TAR. For a specific profile, the critical decisions they are empowered to make unilaterally would be explicitly listed or described under their defined Authorities. This makes it clear where "the buck stops" for specific decision types within that profile's scope.
- Adjacent Decisions: Decisions owned by other profiles where a profile "interacts with or contributes to" align with the Tasks (T) and Responsibilities (R) components of the TAR.
- The task might be Provide input on [Decision Type X] owned by [Profile Y]
- The responsibility might be Responsible for contributing necessary data or analysis to decisions owned by the [Profile Z] or Responsible for collaborating with [Profile A] on [Decision Type B]
- Listing these adjacent decisions within a profile helps clarify the boundaries and required interactions with other profiles, fulfilling the article's goal of reducing duplication and power struggles.
By explicitly defining these decision types within the established TAR framework of each USM profile, organizations can achieve the clarity advocated by the Decision Scope concept while leveraging the structured foundation of the USM method's profile definition. This aligns with the article's call to use job descriptions (or in USM's case, the detailed profile definition) as sources of truth for role definition and decision-making authority.
The approach taken by USM in defining processes purely by the 'what' and structuring the organizational dimension with specific profiles based on the principle of separation of duties, such as Process Managers and Coordinators, provides a clear and unambiguous framework.
This clear separation of concerns, combined with the definition of Profilesthat bridge the gap between process and organization by combining tasks, authorities, and responsibilities with required skills and knowledge, allows for work to be organized and assigned effectively.
The resulting standardized routines and workflows, which are derived from the non-redundant USM process model by adding the 'who' and 'how', ensure predictable service delivery and enable unambiguous controlover service activities.
This emphasis on clarity, structure, and standardization in linking processes to the people who execute them, particularly through the explicit derivation of procedures and work instructions from the underlying process logic, is a prime example of how the USM service management architecture drives control and predictability in service delivery, often overcoming the ambiguity inherent in less structured approaches like RACI charts.
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