RASIC

A launch slips by three weeks, and the review meeting turns into a search for whoever was supposed to book the testing. The project lead thought the engineer had it. The engineer thought the manager had booked it. The analyst who had spent two weeks helping with the work was never told that the date had moved.

Figure 1. RASIC

What it is

RASIC records who does a task, who owns its outcome, who helps, who needs updates and who must provide input. Those five roles are Responsible, Accountable, Support, Inform and Consult.

It is the familiar RACI chart with Support added. Support people do part of the work themselves, while Consult people only advise on it. Naming the helpers matters on a big task, because otherwise the person doing it is left to find help on their own and nobody plans for the hours that help takes. Each task still has exactly one Accountable person.

How it works

Responsible

Who will actually do the work?

Name a person rather than a team. Every task needs at least one R, because a task with no R is a task nobody is doing. If two or three people share the role, write down which part of the work each of them carries out.

Accountable

Who owns the outcome and signs it off?

Give each task exactly one A. This person assigns the work, makes the final call and answers for the result. If two people both claim final authority, agree who approves the outcome before work continues, because that argument only gets harder once the work is under way.

Support

Who will help do the work, and how much of their time will it take?

For each person marked S, agree what help they will give and how many hours they can commit, and check that their own manager knows. Keep the list short. If everyone is Support on everything, you have clarified nothing.

Inform

Who needs to hear the outcome?

Inform runs one way. These people hear about decisions and progress without being asked for their view. Decide when and how each of them will hear, such as the go-live date in the weekly update, so that nobody learns about a change after it has hit them.

Consult

Whose input does the work need before it goes ahead?

Consult runs both ways, and every C is a conversation the Responsible person has to hold before moving. For each person marked C, name the input you need and the date you need it by. Anyone who only needs to know the result belongs in Inform.

When to reach for it

A handoff went wrong and people are asking who was supposed to do it
Two people both believe they own the same decision
A large project where the person doing the work needs hands-on help and that help has not been planned

“The first time, I tried to run it off the side of my desk with a million other priorities, and it bombed spectacularly.”

A worked example

Harbourline Freight, a fictional trucking company, was moving its dispatch team onto new scheduling software, and the first attempt had stalled for a month. The operations director wrote out the roles for the whole switch as one task, "move dispatch onto the new scheduling software". The first draft had two people marked Accountable, because the IT manager and the dispatch supervisor each believed the switch was theirs. Five people were marked Consult, and nobody was marked Support.

The team worked through the letters in order. The dispatch supervisor became Responsible for running the switch and deciding the order in which routes moved over.

The operations director took Accountable, because the go-live date was theirs to sign off. The IT analyst and a senior dispatcher became Support, the analyst to load the route data and fix errors and the dispatcher to test the new schedules against a live week of loads, and each agreed the hours they would give.

The customer service lead and the driver team leads became Inform, so they would hear the go-live date in time to tell customers and drivers. Consult shrank to two people, the IT manager on the link to billing and the finance controller on whether the license fitted the budget. Signing the software contract went on a separate line with its own Accountable person.

The director settled it this way because the stall had come from two people waiting on each other and from help nobody had planned. Now the supervisor knew who was working beside them, and the senior dispatcher's hours on the project were planned for the first time.

Try it this week

Pick one task on a real project where ownership feels unclear. By the end of the week you'll have a written set of roles for it that everyone named has agreed to.

Write the task as a phrase with a clear output, such as "prepare the project budget for approval".
List everyone involved and give each person their letter, R, A, S, I or C, marking someone R/A if they both do the work and own the outcome, and leaving out anyone with no role.
Check that the task has exactly one A and at least one R, and settle any second claim to the A before work continues.
Next to each S, write the help they will give and the hours they can commit, and next to each C, the input needed and the date it is due.
Confirm the roles with everyone named by Friday, and name the person who updates the record when the task changes.

Try it with AI

Copy this prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or any AI assistant and fill in the part in square brackets. It will walk you through the model one step at a time, using your own situation.

Prompt

I have a task where ownership feels unclear: [describe the task, the people involved, and what has gone wrong so far].

If you can open links, read https://www.colincox.com/library/rasic first. It explains RASIC, where Responsible does the work, Accountable owns the outcome, Support helps do the work, Inform hears the outcome, and Consult gives input before the work goes ahead.

First, help me write the task as a phrase with a clear output. Then go through the people one at a time, ask me what each of them actually does, and wait for my answer before you suggest a letter. Flag it if the task has more or fewer than one A, if nobody is R, or if Consult is crowded with people who only need to be informed. For anyone marked Support, ask me how many hours they can give.

Finish with the full assignment as a short list, and ask me who will confirm it with everyone named, and by when.

Leave out names and anything confidential before you paste in your situation.

From Colin's work

I once led a reorganization across five departments in several offices. The first time, I tried to run it off the side of my desk with a million other priorities, and it bombed spectacularly.

We redid it a year later, and that time we used this chart. We seconded a project manager from her role in the business for nine months to be the change manager, so she was the R, responsible for executing the reorg. I was the A, the executive sponsor, and if it failed, it was on me. Our whole executive team supported her. All staff were informed. We consulted the leaders in every area, and we created a champions group of frontline staff from every part of the business. We told them, "You get your voice heard but you don't get a vote," and we asked them to help us not mess this up.

She held me accountable as the executive sponsor and kept pushing me for the message. The champions made a material difference in our execution, and the second time we reorganized all those people, it worked beautifully.

Related tools

Adapted from the RACI responsibility assignment matrix

Want help putting this to work with your team? Book a free thirty minutes with Colin.