Decisions
45 min

RAPID

Assign five distinct roles — recommend, agree, perform, input, decide — so that a decision has exactly one decider and no hidden vetoes.

Time cost
45 min
Output
A named person against each of the five roles.
Steps
6

Use when

  • A decision keeps being reopened after it was apparently made.
  • Several people believe they own it, or nobody does.
  • The people who must carry it out were not consulted and are quietly refusing.

Do not use when

  • Two people are deciding. The overhead exceeds the benefit.
  • The roles will be assigned to match existing seniority rather than actual contribution, which reproduces the problem in a diagram.

Inputs required

  • A specific decision
  • The people with a genuine claim on it

Procedure

  1. 01

    Recommend

    One person owns building the proposal: gathering input, running the analysis, putting an option forward. This is the heaviest role and it is often left unassigned.

  2. 02

    Agree

    People who must sign off, usually because of a legal, financial or safety constraint. Every Agree is a veto, so keep this list as short as the constraints require and no longer.

  3. 03

    Perform

    Those who will execute. Name them before deciding, not after. A decision that surprises the performers is a decision that will be re-litigated during execution.

  4. 04

    Input

    Consulted, not deciding. Say so explicitly, because unstated Input roles are experienced as vetoes by the people holding them.

  5. 05

    Decide

    One person. Not two, not a committee. They commit the organisation and they own the outcome. If you cannot name them, that is the decision to make first.

  6. 06

    Publish the assignment

    Write it where the people involved can see it. Most of the benefit comes from everyone learning which role they are not in.

Characteristic failure mode

Agree inflation. Every stakeholder who wants influence gets assigned Agree rather than Input, and the decision now requires unanimity from a group that was never meant to have a veto.

Worked example

A volunteer organisation cannot settle on a new meeting venue after three months.

  1. 01Recommend: the events coordinator, who has the quotes.
  2. 02Agree: the treasurer only, because the constraint is financial.
  3. 03Input: the six regular attendees who had been acting as blockers.
  4. 04Decide: the chair.

Result

Decided in a week. The change was moving five people from an assumed veto to a stated Input role, which they accepted once it was said aloud.

Where to go next

Also cited by
Vroom–Yetton