Last week, we discussed why the RACI model sucks. Planning out responsibilities in detail at the start of the project can prevent you from learning and adapting as you go. A much better approach to divvying up responsibilities is to have a regular, structured conversation about them.

That’s the “R” in RACI, but what about the other letters?

Most people find “consulted” the trickiest bit – involving everyone who needs to input into a decision, without a massive, unwieldy process. How can agile help with this?

Reduce how much input you need

Perhaps unexpectedly, I’m going to advocate for involving fewer people than you think in making decisions. This is despite what I say about the importance of empowering people through collective decision making. The critical distinction here is that decisions should be made by the people doing the work, rather than a long list of senior stakeholders or others who are peripherally involved.

If there are a dozen people you need to consult every time you make a minor decision, nothing will get done. But you can avoid this by spending more time upstream.

Invest time in collectively agreeing some bigger picture outcomes you want to achieve together. Then use these as the basis for your individual bits of work. Most people prefer to be consulted this way, as it allows them meaningful input without commenting on endless drafts. It also means you can move much more quickly once you’ve got started.

How do you do this in practice? It could be as simple as spending some time in a project kick-off meeting individually capturing what outcomes you would each like to see. Theme the answers and use these to set your overall goals for the work.

You can reduce other consultation needed further by giving people tools to help empower them to work independently. Perhaps you want everyone to draw on similar messaging, reference some key facts or use certain layouts in the design of their work. If so, give them a toolkit explaining all that.

Get feedback efficiently

Of course, there will still be times when you need to get feedback. How can you make the process as smooth as possible?

Perhaps you can get all the input you need in a single meeting discussing a concrete proposal, using the silent meeting format I’ve talked about before. Or maybe you just need to make a collective decision and some agile decision making tools might help you.

Where you do need to lots of people to comment on something, give then a clear and transparent process. This could be a live document where everyone can see other people’s comments, accompanied by some clear deadlines. Make it clear that if you don’t receive feedback by a certain date, you aren’t able to include it.

One person should own the process and resolve any competing feedback. Approach this with the mindset of being an informed captain – you are ultimately responsible for the decision, but you will take time to listen to input along the way. Netflix use this approach and says it allows them to be ‘highly aligned and loosely coupled’, which is a great way of putting it!

What about you – how do you manage who gets to input into decisions?