How to Build a RACI Chart for a Small Business

The letters are easy to remember and easy to misuse, so pin down each one:

• Responsible (R): The person or people who do the work. There can be several.
• Accountable (A): The one person who answers for the outcome and can say yes or no. There must be exactly one.
• Consulted (C): People whose input is needed before the work is done or the decision is made. It's a two-way conversation.
• Informed (I): People who need to know what happened afterward. It's a one-way message.

The same person can be both R and A when they do the work and own the result, which is common in small teams. What can't happen is two As on one row, because two owners means nobody is sure who decides.

Set aside an hour with the people involved and follow these steps:

1. Choose the scope. Pick one process or project, such as customer onboarding, not the entire company.
2. List the tasks and decisions. Write 8 to 15 rows in plain verbs, such as "approve discount over the standard limit" or "send the welcome kit".
3. List the people or roles. Use roles instead of names where possible, so the chart survives turnover.
4. Fill each row. Start by assigning the A, then the R, then add only the C and I roles that are truly needed.
5. Check the pattern. Every row needs one A and at least one R. Watch for people overloaded with As, and rows with no one informed who should be.
6. Get agreement. Show it to everyone named and adjust before publishing.

Take the process of approving and ordering supplies in a ten-person company. Written as rows, the chart might read like this:

• Request supplies: any team member is R; the team lead is A; the office manager is I.
• Approve a purchase under the team's limit: the team lead is R and A; the office manager is I.
• Approve a purchase above the limit: the office manager is R; the operations lead is A; finance is C; the requester is I.
• Place the order: the office manager is R and A; the requester is I.
• Reconcile the invoice: the bookkeeper is R; finance is A; the office manager is C.

Notice that each row has one A, and the C roles appear only where input changes the answer. The purchase order approval workflow shows the same idea at a larger scale.

These make the chart ignored:

• Two Accountable people on one row. It feels fair, but it guarantees a stalled decision.
• Everyone is Consulted. If every decision needs five opinions, nothing moves. Cut consulted roles to the people whose input could change the outcome.
• Too many rows. A 60-row chart is a reference document, not a working tool. Break it into one chart per process.
• Naming a committee or "the team". Accountability needs a person or a single role.
• Building it once and forgetting it. Roles change. Review the chart every quarter and after any reorganization.
• Confusing R and A. The person doing the work isn't automatically the one who answers for it.

If your main problem is who gets to decide rather than who does the work, a decision rights matrix may fit better.

RACI works best for processes that cross teams, involve handoffs, or have repeated confusion about who owns what: onboarding a customer, approving spend, publishing content, closing the books, running a hiring loop. For a five-person team where everyone knows their role, a full chart may be overkill, and a simple list of owners will do.

Use it to solve a specific problem. If dropped handoffs are the trouble, build the chart for that process alone. Then put its outcome where people will see it: in your employee handbook for standing policies, or in your hiring process for recruiting steps.

A chart on a shared drive won't change behavior. Build it into the tools people use. In a task tool such as Asana, every task has one assignee, which mirrors the Accountable rule, while collaborators can hold the R, C and I roles as followers or subtasks. Monday.com suits teams that prefer visual boards, with people columns for owners and status alerts for the informed group.

Set up your project template so the roles appear automatically when a project starts. The article on setting up Asana for a small team shows how, and the project tool comparison compares the options.