As a local business owner, you have to wear a lot of hats.
You’re the financial manager. You’re the hiring team. And you’re the marketer.
But have you ever taken a step back to think that there has to be a better way to allocate tasks and projects accordingly to ensure goals and timelines are met?
That’s where RACI comes in. This tool is designed to help you and your team determine who needs to be Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. See why it’s called RACI?
The RACI chart helps clarify the roles and responsibilities of each team member and prevents confusion by assigning clear ownership for tasks and decisions of each part of a project. This tool is also great for small and large teams — and for when your own employees wear multiple hats. With these helpful tips, you will understand how to construct your own RACI and have an easy layout for all team members to uphold.
Where to Begin?
When creating a RACI, you first want to have a full understanding of what roles and responsibilities each of the letters entails. This will help ensure that nothing gets missed and the correct person is assigned to each task. You will also want to keep in mind while going through each responsibility how you want to plan your RACI and what information you need listed.
When constructing the RACI, it’s good to know what makes the most sense pertaining to the project you’re trying to complete and have clear direction for each task. You also want to know the reason why you are putting a RACI together. This tool is great for a new project, a specific client workflow, and working with other departments or amongst your own team. It helps identify each role you are accountable for and see how your role plays a part in the task at large. Therefore, by laying everything out, nothing gets missed.
Getting Started with RACI
It’s time to put your RACI together. As mentioned above, this tool can be used for anything, but this example will map out tasks for local affiliates to use for an upcoming seasonal campaign.
First, you want to think and list all the departments or individual people who will be touching or working on getting your campaign started. This list could include your graphics designers, paid media director, marketing director, etc. This will be your roles column listed across the top of your Excel sheet. Once you have listed the individuals who will be involved in this project, you will record everything from start to finish of the processes needed to complete this project.
You will want to list who begins the initial discovery, what items are needed and who obtains them, if a form or presentation needs to be created, who is responsible for putting this together, and who needs to be informed. As you begin to list all of your items, you can also add a column next to your tasks with a detailed description of what the task means or any additional insight you wish to give your team.
Now that you have the list of tasks and the correct members who will be managing, helping execute, or just being informed laid out, you are now able to begin labeling each responsibility for each task to the appropriate person. This is where the RACI key comes into play, understanding who is “responsible” for each task and if any other members need to be accountable, consulted, or informed. You can even color-code each item, as shown in the example below.
Putting Your Plan into Motion
At this point, your RACI chart has painted a clear description of all of the tasks needed to begin working on your seasonal campaign and what role(s) each person has. Now, it’s time to schedule a meeting with all members listed to review your RACI. You will want to make sure you provide a clear understanding of what RACI stands for and the goal of this chart, then go through task by task mentioning who is responsible for what. This is also your time to have an open discussion to ensure everyone is on the same page or make any last-minute updates. Lastly, make sure this document is saved in a place where all members can access and reference the chart.
By having a RACI in place for all of your projects and assignments, you and your team will now have a source of truth to reference when completing a task!
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