Consulting Essentials - Roles and responsibilities charting
Lack of clarity on roles and responsibilities in a business is often a cause of duplicated effort, frustration and wasted time. Here’s an exercise to try with your project team.
- Brainstorm all the key activities that need to take place within your project, for example, “provide weekly flash reports”, “issue monthly benefits scorecard”, “develop Steering Team updates”;
- Write these down the left hand side of a flipchart;
- Write the names of your project team members across the top of the flipchart and create a grid;
- Take the first activity and agree who is the “Accountable” person. By Accountable I mean, where does the buck stop if the activity is not completed satisfactorily. Enter an “A” in the grid against that activity and person. There can only be one “A” for any one activity;
- Then think who is Responsible for each task. By Responsible I mean who is the actual “doer” of the task, the person who does the work. Then enter an “R” in the grid against that task and person. There could be more than one person who has the “R” for a particular task. Note that the person who has the “R” could also have the “A”;
- Repeat this for all the activities listed down the left hand side of the flip chart
- Check that one person does not have all the “A”s – that would indicate an imbalance within the team. If this is the case then rethink some of the activities.
- Agree the final roles and responsibilities chart with the team
This will help you be clear within the project team on who should be doing what around project activities. Now transfer this methodology to another area within your client’s business; maybe a business process that is the focus of your project. There could be a quick win for you here.