Responsibility Charting: A Tool for Clarifying Roles Responsibility charting clarifies what is required to manage activities or decisions. It helps reduce ambiguity, wasted energy, and adverse emotional reactions between individuals or teams who work interdependently. THE BASIC PROCESS People whose roles interrelate or who manage interdependent groups list the activities or decisions that affect their relationship on the vertical axis of a responsibility chart. Then they identify the people involved in each action or decision and list them on the horizontal axis. The people involved can include: • the individuals directly involved in a decision • the managers of those involved • any people outside the organization who are customers of the decisions or activities The participants then chart the required behavior of each person relative to a particular activity or decision, using these classifications: R - has responsibility for a particular action, but not necessarily authority. This person or group does not necessarily make the decision, but is responsible for making sure it is approved. A - must approve - has power to veto the action S - must support - has to provide resources for the action (but not necessarily agree with it) I - must be informed or consulted before the action, but cannot veto - irrelevant to the particular action GROUND RULES 1. No box may contain more than one letter. 2. No more than one R can exist for an activity or decision. Agreement on where the R resides is the first step. If agreement can't be reached on who has the R, there are three options: − Break the problem into parts. − Move the R up one level in the organization. − Move the decision about the location of the R up one level. 3. Once the R is placed, other letters can be agreed upon. 4. Avoid deciding too many A's it leads to difficulty in making a decision or accomplishing the task. Re negotiate to change some A's into S's or I's. 5. If one person has the A on most decisions, that person could become an obstacle to getting things done. 6. The Support person has to expend resources or produce something that is then used by the person Responsible for the action. The support role and its specific demands must be clarified and clearly assigned. The usefulness of responsibility charting lies not only in the end product of an agreed-upon chart but also in the new understanding of people's roles and required behavior that grows out of the charting process. . Responsibility Charting: A Tool for Clarifying Roles Responsibility charting clarifies what is required to manage activities or decisions required behavior of each person relative to a particular activity or decision, using these classifications: R - has responsibility for a particular action,