Earlier this month I posted a revelation:

I don’t want to reveal Bredemarket’s secret process, so I’m just going to call it WOMBAT. Not that WOMBAT is unique to Bredemarket; far from it. Many companies use WOMBAT.

And many companies don’t use WOMBAT. In fact, they abhor WOMBAT and call it stifling. (Emotion words. Geddit?)

But I’ve found over the years that if you don’t use WOMBAT, there’s a very good chance that you’ll break things.

And who catches hell? The consultant. “Why did you do what we asked you to do? Now look at the mess you made!”

So out of a sense of fear and self-preservation (geddit?), there are times that I’ve secretly used WOMBAT and not told my clients I’m doing it.

Well, I’m going to reveal one component of WOMBAT in this post because I’m surprised that I haven’t already discussed it.

But there’s a risk involved, because once I discuss this component, there are about five people in the world who will immediately know what my WOMBAT is. But luckily for me, none of them read the Bredemarket blog, so my secret is safe.

(Speaking of risk, the racy—not RACI—wombat image was created by Imagen 3.)

RACI

As some of you undoubtedly figured out, I’m going to discuss RACI: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed.

Assume for the moment that Bredemarket grows beyond its sole proprietorship origins and becomes a multinational employing thousands of people. At some point I’ll be sitting in my luxurious executive suite, nibbling on caviar, and I’ll bark out an order:

“Write a blog post about a wildebeest amusement park!”

Now the blog post won’t just magically happen. And because the fictional Bredemarket is a huge enterprise, it will take more than one person to make it so. Perhaps four, perhaps more, perhaps fewer. Here’s how Bob Kantor at CIO defines Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed:

Responsible: People or stakeholders who do the work. They must complete the task or objective or make the decision. Several people can be jointly Responsible.

Accountable: Person or stakeholder who is the “owner” of the work. He or she must sign off or approve when the task, objective or decision is complete. This person must make sure that responsibilities are assigned in the matrix for all related activities. Success requires that there is only one person Accountable, which means that “the buck stops there.”

Consulted: People or stakeholders who need to give input before the work can be done and signed-off on. These people are “in the loop” and active participants.

Informed: People or stakeholders who need to be kept “in the picture.” They need updates on progress or decisions, but they do not need to be formally consulted, nor do they contribute directly to the task or decision.

Personally, there may be cases when you only want a single person to be responsible for the work. But I agree that only one should be accountable.

Applying RACI

Using my ludicrous example, one (or more) people will be responsible for writing the wildebeest amusement park blog post, a single person (presumably one of my junior vice presidents) will be accountable for approving it, and various entities will be consulted for feedback (and, in the ideal world, may actually provide feedback). Then there are a few people who will be informed about the project, merely to roll their eyes at the whole thing.

Regardless of the process you institute, whether it is my super-secret WOMBAT process or something else, RACI responsibilities will help tremendously. Here’s another quote from Bob Kantor at CIO:

Having managed and rescued dozens of projects, and helped others do so, I’ve noted that there is always one critical success factor (CSF) that has either been effectively addressed or missed/messed up: clarity around the roles and responsibilities for each project participant and key stakeholder. No matter how detailed and complete a project plan may be for any project, confusion or omission of participant roles and responsibilities will cause major problems.

And some Accountable person approved what Kantor said.

Reapplying RACI

And this also affects Bredemarket’s content, proposal, and analysis work. For example, let’s look at the proposal that I recently helped a Bredemarket client win.

• Two of us were jointly responsible for completing and submitting the proposal: myself, and a person at the client company. Yes, I know what I just said about preferring that only one person be responsible, but the federal agency in question would not let me submit the proposal; someone from the client had to do it.
• This second person was the one who was accountable for the submission of the proposal.
• There were several people who were consulted regarding this proposal. I cannot reveal their roles, but let’s just say that all of them were…um…critically important.
• Then there were a few people here and there who were informed of the proposal progress.

Perhaps Bredemarket can work on a project with you. Let me know. https://bredemarket.com/cpa/