How To Talk With Leadership Teams About Ownership & Accountability

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Galen Low: Hey folks, thanks for tuning in. My name is Galen Low with the Digital Project Manager. We are a community of digital professionals on a mission to help each other get skilled, get confident, and get connected so that we can amplify the value of project management in a digital world. If you want to hear more about that, head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership.

Alright, we are back with the second part of our conversation on how something as simple as RACI can get enterprise decision making unstuck. In the first part, we talked through a few case studies of using RACI to solve Fortune 500 level logjams, and today we're going to get tactical and get a lesson in having tough RACI conversations.

Here with me again is Cassie Solomon, organizational change and digital transformation leader, and also author of “Leading Successful Change: 8 Keys To Making Change Work”, a book that's been published by Wharton twice since 2013 and revised in 2020. 

Cassie, thanks for joining me for part two. 

Cassie Solomon: Thank you so much, Galen. This is really fun. I'm delighted to be back. 

Galen Low: I loved our part one conversation because actually we did dive deep. We got into some of the tactical, practical, how some of this actually works in real life beyond the theory. And it got me thinking about just, some of these conversations.

Some of the tough conversations that need to be had. You used the word negotiations and we arrived at this idea that, yeah, all RACI conversations, these conversations about, who's responsible for what. Who has the authority to do what. They are somewhat all negotiations. So, I thought maybe we could dive in here.

My main thing is that, I imagine that having to tell someone, particularly someone in a position of power, that they are not authorized to make a decision, or that they are only to be informed, that probably isn't an easy message to deliver. And yet, you, in your work, like, you come in as an outsider, and you're working with executives to untangle inefficiency by doing exactly that.

And I was wondering if you could just step us through the process. Maybe we could do some role playing, a little bit. And maybe let's say that I'm a senior leader who is accountable for an entire business line, P&L and all, soup to nuts. But you've got to tell me that I don't own an IT initiative that will impact my business line, because it's a wider reaching initiative.

I wonder if maybe you could tell me how you prep for a conversation like that. 

Cassie Solomon: So first of all, I just want to acknowledge what everyone understands deeply to be true, which is that it's a lot easier for an outsider to come in and say something difficult to a senior executive than it is for an insider, because my contract is on the line, but your job is on the line. And that's why they bring in consultants to have these kinds of conversations. 

Galen Low: Fair enough.

Cassie Solomon: So I'm really humble about whether or not my wisdom is better than the internal people's wisdom, but my access is often better. So this comes up all the time because, especially the PMI is very clear that it wants us all to have a single A on every project.

And the company that we were just talking about earlier, the large established tech company in California really wanted to speed up its decision making, but out of the box they put two executives on every new initiative. And then the CEO said, and we want one A for everything, scratched our chin and said, huh, that's a little bit of a contradiction.

I'm not as zealous about the one A thing. I think that our modern organizations, global, challenged, fast paced, there are plenty A's. The point of a RACI exercise is to have as few as possible, like Einstein, like everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. So if I'm trying to explain to this executive that the CEO has handed down this edict that there's going to be one A, and you may have it for the initiative, but IT is a pretty important stakeholder.

They can say yes all day long. Actually, it comes to one of RACI's deficits. It doesn't have a deadline associated with it. So let's say that IT comes to you and says, yes, of course, I can reshape this part of the system to reflect what you need. And you want it, by the end of the month, and IT has got it on its roadmap for year three.

That's a pretty big discrepancy, and it's actually not about role. It's just about deadline. And a lot of those pain points, especially with IT, end up being about delivery speed. But I actually think RACI helps us a lot with these difficult conversations because it's such a neutral language. I'll use an example that's a little more in the empowerment space.

Like, I'm not going to go in and say, Hey executive, you're a control freak and you're micromanaging and you're a perfectionist. Do what everybody is doing right. That's a difficult message that puts someone on the defensive. But the RACI language is pretty mild. Like, you can go in and say, Hey, let's take a look at the decisions that need to get made on this project, the A's. 

Can some of these be delegated? Who would you give them to? And since we said, as we said earlier, that's the working definition of empowerment. We're no longer personalizing the feedback. This is not about your leadership style, whether it's good enough or needs to improve. It's just about roles.

Let's just talk the role language. Let's just go after getting rid of some of those A's that you are hoarding on your plate without. But I also think that part of what you get into is that is how do you develop your people so that you can trust them to make quality decisions? Like if we've just started working together, you could be the greatest manager with 20 years of experience, but if you're new to me and I've never worked with you, it is much harder for me to trust you and give decision making over to you than if we've been through several rodeos together already. So one of the things I really talk to people about is the idea that empowerment is a journey. It's not a binary on/off switch.

Galen Low: I like that. What's implicit here to me, tell me if I'm right or wrong about this, is that going into this conversation, you are doing a bit, you're picking your tone, right? Not like a, oh, boss says you have to do this, edict has been delivered, let's figure it out.

And it's not, hey, stop hoarding all the stuff, but it's more of the, sort of a neutral positioning, right? And using RACI's neutrality, like, to your advantage. But it also strikes me that you probably have been doing some research, I know as a consultant you'd be coming in and you'd probably have this information, but either way it seems like it would be helpful to know what those A's are that could be delegated. Like what is this person responsible for, like how much, what's the breadth of their scope, so that, you're not just looking at the one thing being like you have to give this up, that you can actually frame it as you have a lot on the go.

You should probably give this up. Like you can empower somebody. You can empower yourself. 

Cassie Solomon: When it works, it's good for everybody. It's better for the people who are empowered because they can get stuff done and getting stuff done is like, it's like an aphrodisiac. People actually love to be on high performing teams.

It turns out that high performing teams are the best thing that ever happened to morale. It's the low performing teams where people feel frustrated and stuck and they go around in circles. Those are the teams that get people down and looking for other jobs. So anything we can do to get our teams working at that level, it's just a tremendous win all the way around.

Galen Low: I like the high performance angle. 

I wonder maybe we could just dive into the conversation itself. Like you're in the moment, maybe just like walk me through your approach. 

Cassie Solomon: So a little bit sideways on this answer, but I think of delegation as one side of the coin and initiative as the other side of the coin.

And there's this awesome, really old resource that we can link to in the show notes called "Who’s Got the Monkey?". Have you ever heard of it? It's an HBR article from 1999. It is so dated, Galen, that when you read it, it will make you grind your teeth, but it has some great stuff in it. It's like one of my personal ambitions to revise it for 25 years later.

But one of the gems in this article is they describe these different levels of initiative. And level zero is wait to be told what to do. And level one is ask, how would you like me to do this, right? And the next level up is come with a recommendation. Whether it's right or wrong, just tell me what you think we should do and then get my permissions over.

In that scenario, the manager or the leader still has the A. Level four is take action and then come back and inform on the action that you took. This is act now, beg forgiveness later. That's that level, right?

Galen Low: I was going to say this one sounds familiar to me. 

Cassie Solomon: Yeah. We know what to call that one. And then the final level five is where you just take over the entire role. Right? And you do your job and you periodically check back in with your boss on outcomes or like problems that you're having, but you're just off doing it on your own. And I think that idea of leveling is really important and it has implications for delegation and also for empowerment. 

So when delegating, one of the things I really want to do if I'm developing you is I want to say the article says no more level zero, no more level one, just take them away from your team. They're not allowed to do that. They must come in at level two, which is bring me your recommendation. And even if they're completely wrong, we can have a conversation about how I view that and why I would do it differently.

So you got to know the level of the person that you're delegating to in order to do that successfully. And what I see in the empowerment world, and I think, and we have developed a way of talking about this is, people just saying, said this a little bit before, 'I'm moralistically wanting to be a good leader so I'm going to empower my teams and I'm going to send them off into the cross functional deep end. And I'm going to step back because that makes me a good leader.' 

And actually what you're doing is you're throwing them into the wolves and asking them to flail around in the cross functional space where they don't know how much authority they have and they don't know how much authority their peers have, and that's where things get stuck. So what do you say if you're empowering a team or a person that is like any level of novelty, even if I've worked with you for 10 years and I trust you absolutely. But you're going off to innovate and do something that we've never seen before. I've never seen it, so how do I know what good looks like?

You've never seen it, so how do you know you succeeded, right? Like, there are different levels of checking in on the work that are dictated by different circumstances. You check in more often if have familiarity with the people. You check in more often, with God forbid, they've let you down in the past and you check in more often if the team is brand new to each other and they don't know what they're doing and the work is novel.

So seeing empowerment across that kind of shades of journey is very helpful and it liberates executives to say, oh, I can actually give guidelines and parameters and tell people what I'm looking for. And that doesn't make me a bad leader. That makes me a good leader who's promoting more clarity.

And sometimes I say to them, look, it's like bumper guards in bowling, right? When the team is new or the person is still new to you, use the bumper guards. And then after, they've played together for a while, you can take the bumper guards out and say, look, it just got harder, but you're ready for that. 

Galen Low: In my head, I'm kind of like, hey, that's sort of who's got the monkey kind of like, it almost reflects like, a more traditional sort of career path, like where you go from your first job until you, your sort of final jobs.

But the other thing that kind of struck me is that in part one, we were talking about like, everyone like craves authority and we're trained that way. But, you know, as you're mentioning, as you're talking about delegation, like the game actually, there's an empowering game to be like, to get out of RNA and into being the one who's like consulted and then maybe to the person that's informed because everyone who's getting those things done is at whatever level five, right?

They're taking initiative. They're just doing it. And, yeah, maybe they haven't done it before, maybe there's ambiguity, but, you become a source of some of the information and the knowledge without necessarily having to be accountable for, a big strategic initiative. It sounds counterintuitive.

As I'm saying it out loud, I'm like, is that good? Should people want to be just C's and I's in the RACI chart? I don't know, but I like that notion that, you'd come to me in this scenario and you'd say, listen, like, you can be an empowering leader. It's about delegation. Look at the folks that you're delegating this to, the folks on the IT side.

They're not, whatever, level fives yet, they're sort of level fours. They're gonna grab it by the reins and do it. And yeah, it'll probably will need some input from you, but you know, you don't have to be the person guiding the level zeroes and the level ones, that level of management, and it isn't that nice.

Cassie Solomon: Well, and I think, I had a CEO say to me once, look, Cassie, stop being so impatient with bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is your friend. It's how things get done day after day in a consistent way. So we've actually built these structures to do what we want them to do and they're doing it right. Most of the time, very successfully, they've developed processes, they have timelines, they have clear lines of authority inside IT, for example, on a good day. 

But then we come along and we say, Oh, wait a minute. We have a really important strategy initiative. Oh, wait a minute. We have a change initiative. It's an imperative. We can't do business as usual. And then we're like, wait a minute. The bureaucracy was built to do business as usual. We want it to do business as usual.

So if you're going to interrupt that flow, you're got to have to need your senior leader to step in and say, look, I know that's your cadence and I know that's what we've asked you to do. Thank you so much. Could you pause this one and give me more resources on this thing where the wheels are falling off the bus over here or where this is critical to our future success?

And I just want to clarify one thing. I wouldn't say I love authority as much as I love clarity. So I want my senior level executives to step in at the right time and not at the wrong time. Because where things get messed up is first, the executive says, I'm such a great executive. I'm going to empower you and let you go off on your own.

And then three months later, they come in and say, Oh, wait a minute. That's not looking very good to me. That's not what I meant at all. Or wow, how did you get into the bushes like that? And then they discourage people, right? That's the opposite of empowering people. That's when people say, wait a minute, I did all this work because you said I was empowered.

And then you show up and tell me that all of the last two months was wrong. So you got to help the executives recognize their authority at the beginning to set the bumper guards, to set the conditions for success, to set in the check-ins so they're not dropping in from the sky, like some weird parachute.

And then you can keep the project on the track that you want to keep it on. And people don't feel discouraged when you show up. You and I, I mean, we've seen executives parachuting in way too many times to bad effect and they're not doing the wrong work. They're just doing it at the wrong time.

Galen Low: And one of the things you said earlier is that RACI doesn't have sort of a time frame, one of the sort of shortcomings that it has. How do you make RACI solve for this idea of maybe too vague of direction at the beginning and, parachuting in with negativity at the wrong time later on? 

Cassie Solomon: Well, I see those as two very good but separate questions. So let me start with deadline and then go to how do you prevent the parachute.

It's just really easy to add a column to a RACI chart and put a deadline by every critical activity. I encourage people to put deadlines on decisions as well and also track it. There's some really cool software coming out of Australia called Janua, where you can actually measure your decision making and see how long it takes and get people in the software to weigh in and give advice and have it all organized in one place.

Yeah. Disclosure, that's a partner of mine. That's easy. People just have to recognize, Oh, I need a deadline column on my RACI chart. And you remember we went and reviewed a bunch of project management tools to see how well they handled RACI assignments. And every single one of them had a deadline column in it.

So I think the world has figured that out. I'm not worried about the deadline. Second question, way harder, how do I help my executives not swoop in with their parachute at the wrong time of the project and set us all back? And I think it's coaching at the executive level, but also it's coaching at the project leader level.

So, if you've been burned in the past, especially by this particular executive, and you're getting a new assignment, it is 100 percent within your role to go to that sponsor and say, sit down, we're going to have a conversation where I just get all of your advice and all of your guidance. You have a C right now and I want everything you're thinking and we run a checklist, like who are the stakeholders you don't want me to ignore?

What's the budget? What can you tell me about the timeline? Are there political considerations I should be aware of? Just the longest conversation possible where you literally pull the bumper guards out of them. And that way there are fewer surprises later on. And you can even say, great, well, this is novel work that we're doing.

It's innovation work. We don't know what the outcome is supposed to look like. I'd really like to schedule a check in with you, executive, once a month. And the executives going, wow, I just empowered this person and they're in my office. I mean, bothering me, it was all this detail that I thought I didn't have to worry about.

And then they want to get on my calendar. So it's a little bit of a risk, but most of the time, even if it's initiated by the project lead, that saves a world of hurt later on down the line. 

Galen Low: I love that tie in with that initiative, right? Where yes, sometimes you might, be the recipient of vague direction from a leader.

But you can also take the initiative to clarify and get to that clarity, right? Like you said, we crave clarity more than authority in some cases, but I do appreciate that angle. Because I see it happen a lot where people are like, I don't know, I got told to do something and I did it, but that turns out it was wrong.

Cassie Solomon: Yeah. Nobody has that kind of time to waste anymore. Every single person I talked to in every single business, almost without exception, there's some that are still haven't woken up. They are desperate for speed. And that kind of rework loop that you're describing, that's terrible for morale and it's terrible for speed.

But I really appreciate you making the link back to initiative because project leaders should never be passive. Like I want to have a big passivity with a red line through it, no level zero, no level one, no, you told me what to do. Okay. It's all like, this is how I recommend we work together.

Let's negotiate how we're going to work together on this project, boss. And how are you going to, coordinate with the other members of the senior team when I run into trouble. Please have that conversation if they're not wise enough to have it. One of the things we're all up against, I think, is that people at the executive level really think that they agree with one another.

They have these very cozy executive team relationships. And they don't recognize where they are not aligned, that shows up lower down in the organization. Greg Shea, my co-author, always says, a quarter inch of misalignment at the top is a mile of misalignment at the bottom. And I really see that. I really see that.

And you go back to the executives and you say, the silos are fighting and infighting and they say, Oh, I hate that you're doing that. Stop that. Right? And they don't look in the mirror and say, Oh, that's because I haven't really sat down with my CTO and said, Hey, we're not getting what we need from you.

So let's have a negotiation at the executive level. Now I'd rather go out and have a drink with my CTO and talk about how much we agree on our vision for the company. 

Galen Low: You know, that's a really interesting one because I was going to throw a question at you to be like, in our little hypothetical scenario where you're coming to tell me that, I'm not going to be the A for this initiative that's going to IT, I was going to ask you, what do you do if I threw up my hands and like, flip the table over and got really mad?

But actually, that's not the worst thing that could happen. I think the worst thing that could happen is the person's like, huh, I'd be like, yeah, okay, Cassie. Sure. Sure thing. And you know that I'm not aligned. There's like that quarter inch of misalignment. What do you do then? And I'm like, yeah, okay, Cassie.

Yep. I'll do it. Take me off the RACI chart. I'll be consulted. And you get that feeling, your gut's just telling you that I'm just going to go and, parachute in like two months from now. What can you do about that? 

Cassie Solomon: It's interesting because are we talking about a negotiation with a peer or with a superior? Because they're different negotiations, obviously. 

Galen Low: That's fair. I guess I had pictured you coming in as you, to tell me that a peer is going to take over an initiative or that impacts my business. 

Cassie Solomon: So I think what we're on is one of the complexities that our very, very simple RACI tool opens up, like the Pandora's box, and what climbs out is there often are two directions for the negotiation.

And one is the peer negotiation, just a horizontal direction. And the other is with my own superior, which is the vertical negotiation. Most of the time, I think what happens, Galen, is people say, well, you go do the peer negotiation first. Cassie, see what you can get worked out with your sibling, right? If we use that metaphor.

And don't come running back to mom and dad unless there's an absolute meltdown. So you start with the peer negotiation. And the other piece of advice I would offer is, when you get to this level with role negotiation, be as specific as possible, because people tend to agree at this kind of like airy-fairy 50,000 foot level, like, yes, you're going to have all the resources you need.

Yes, we love to collaborate with your department. At that level, we all love to look good. But if you come back in and say, can I have this change, to this part of the program by the end of July? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Right? Now you're upsetting my Apple cart. So I often advise people to get very specific in what they're asking for as they do those peer negotiations.

And if you fail at getting consent, like I can't do that specific thing that you need by the end of July, but I can do it by the end of September. That's not a bad outcome. Maybe that's realistic, way better than what you're describing where I bobblehead you and then I go off and do exactly what I want, but let's say I come back and I say, well, that's totally unrealistic.

I can't get it for you by the end of July, but I could get it for you by the end of September. Now you go to your sponsor and say, we are slowing down. And the reason we are slowing down is that IT can't get this piece of it done until the end of September. Is that okay with you? And if the sponsor says, Sure, good job.

You're done. If the sponsor says, Hell no, I refuse to let this project slow down. You say, Go for it. Go over to the CIO, yourself. Get the priorities changed. 

Galen Low: I like both those mechanisms. Like, RACI is one of those things where you're like, how deep do I go? Am I trying to figure out who's responsible for picking up lunch, like on Tuesday?

Or am I just figuring out who's accountable for like the project overall? Like there's an in-between and sort of making that decision of how much you need in between. The answer is just clarity. Like if you feel like you haven't arrived at clarity, if someone's bobbleheading you, okay, I'm, I'm, authorized for this.

And you're like, okay, well, I'm going to drill in. It's like, what that means is, by this date, you'll have done this thing. They'll be like, no, and then, then you get that clarity. And then I like that verticality of if you hit an impasse, yeah, like that's not the end. There is, organizational structure for a reason.

That's where you'd bring in your sponsor or that, the executive sponsor, the person who's that person's boss or those people's boss to make them aware and then drive clarity from there as well. 

Cassie Solomon: I just want to make sure that we're pulling back to something that we said at the beginning, which is all of these things are designed to make decision making visible.

So if you keep it at this kind of high, airy-fairy, I love to be non-conflict with all my peers. We're keeping things in the fog. We're not making them visible. The gift that RACI gives us is the opportunity to say, hey, this decision or this particular piece of the project. I'm having this issue on, and now I've made it visible and I can solve it.

And it's a little bit of a variation on, I think it was Deming, right? You can't manage what you can't measure. And I don't think you can manage what you can't see and describe. 

Galen Low: No, I love that. 

You mentioned at the beginning of part one, right? Like this notion that we have all these visualizations for stuff like org charts and process flows sometimes. And, but there's things that we don't visualize and those are the things where we run into problems. RACI is one of those things where, yeah, you can get a visual on something so that we can have a conversation about it, so we can service it, so we can arrive at clarity, but until it's visible, it's just kind of floaty.

Cassie Solomon: So one more story. This is so many years ago. This was like 10 years ago. I got a call from an oil and gas company in the Middle East, and they said, we just spent two years flowcharting all of our processes, our manufacturing processes, and we won awards. Like quality flowcharts, the best we've ever seen.

And we forgot to do the RACI. So at the end of the day, we have very detailed instructions about what we do and zero information about who does it. And we haven't actually solved our problem. Dang. Right. So like, would you come over and like teach everybody RACI and help us figure out how to take these flowcharts, put them into like people terms. RACI is putting things into people terms. And then we want to pivot and see what each person's job description is like, what are your A's and what are your pieces of work, your R's and what are you supposed to be consulted on? And it was a really big, big project, took about a year to go back and look at their 2000 flowcharts.

It's not the only time I've seen that. And I feel like, especially in project management, where we know how to flowchart task, we know how to work on process. So that's what we do. Right? And then we say like, we're done. Right? And they're like, why isn't anything working? Cause there's this weird, invisible people thing called role that we just couldn't look at.

We didn't know how to look at it. We didn't talk about it. And now we're still in the deep end. 

Galen Low: When we frame it out in a story like that, we're like, yeah, that's so silly. But, it happens all the time, right? Where we're like, we can focus on the what and not the who. And in some ways, not everyone, but I think there's some human instinct around, like, this sort of social getting along-ness.

Which is a technical term for, sometimes conflict is not our first gear. So we'll be like, okay, yeah, process four looks good. That's, we don't, we almost don't want to have those conversations that might invite conflict that is, you know, seen as interpersonal, right? Like it's about people.

But to your point, there's a neutrality to RACI. It's a neutrality to some of these conversations about roles and responsibility. And there is that sort of, high we get on, this notion of high performance through clarity. And that's what this can all bring about. 

Cassie Solomon: I know we're almost out of time, but I want to say we also really like making a distinction between conflict, which I think feels personal.

Like, why isn't Galen contributing to my project the way I expected him to? He's just not taking any initiative. He's a lazy SOB, right? That's conflict. Disagreement can and should be much, much more neutral. Like, Galen, I need you to have more R's on this project team. Is that going to be okay with you?

Can you fit in more work? And then you can come back and say, no, I can't, I can't take any more R's right now. Maybe I should step aside and find somebody else who can. So that neutral language allows you to have a disagreement that you can resolve. Whereas conflict, which feels personal, is very hard to surface.

Because as soon as I surface it, I feel like I'm threatening the relationship. I don't want to be in conflict with my buddy. I'm going to need him again. And also, we went and had a beer last Friday. Like, why would I want to be in conflict with my peer, whereas disagreement is much safer? 

Galen Low: I like that delicacy of, can you please get some more R's?

Cassie Solomon: I seem to have all the Rs. 

Galen Low: We're building a key of furniture, we're like, I've seen to be, I'm, I'm holding the Allen key the whole time. Could you take on any more R's? And if not, could you leave? 

No, but I, I do think it's actually really quite a good way of framing the conversation. So it's not about, some kind of personal attack or conflict, but it's just you know, a disagreement or, to your original point, right?

It's a negotiation about, hey, listen, like, let's have a conversation about roles and responsibilities and negotiate, either you doing more or, figuring out someone who can, I guess. 

Cassie Solomon: I actually recommend that people do try this at home. 

Galen Low: Practice. 

Cassie Solomon: Go home and figure out who's doing all the making dinner work, who's taking the trash out.

Galen Low: Oh, I'm going to do, yeah, house chore RACI instead of a schedule. Okay, great idea. 

Cassie Solomon: House chore RACI, yeah. 

Galen Low: Try and be informed on all of it. 

Cassie Solomon: Look, 13 year old, this is your R. 

Galen Low: Could you take on more R's? 

Awesome. Well, listen, why don't we wrap it there? Thank you so much for taking us through that. Always fun having you on the show. I am going to ask you for a link to "Who's Got the Monkey?", and I will add that link to the show notes. But yeah, this has been great. 

Cassie Solomon: Well, as I say, I highly recommend. It needs a rewrite. I would love to be the person that does it, but there's enough good stuff in it that I think it's worth a visit. Just keep in mind it was 1999.

Galen Low: Not everything ages well. We'll put it out there, cassie Solomon for a rewrite of "Who's Got the Monkey?". We'll do a little campaign. 

Cassie Solomon: Alright, great to be with you, Galen. I really appreciate it. Nice to see everybody in digital project management land. 

Galen Low: Alright folks, there you have it. As always, if you'd like to join the conversation with over a thousand like-minded project management champions, come join our collective. Head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership to learn more. And if you like what you heard today, please subscribe and stay in touch on thedigitalprojectmanager.com.

Until next time, thanks for listening.