The Overload of a New Manager
You’ve earned the promotion and are now in charge of a team. Congratulations. The initial days are often a blur of new responsibilities, meetings, and a sudden influx of questions from your direct reports. Many new managers feel like they've become a bottleneck.
Every small decision, from project timelines to minor expense approvals, lands on their desk. This happens because the lines of authority are blurry. Your team, used to your previous role as a peer, isn't sure what they can decide on their own. You, wanting to prove yourself, might be reluctant to let go of control. This common scenario leads to frustration for everyone: the team feels micromanaged and disempowered, while you feel buried under a mountain of operational tasks instead of focusing on strategic leadership.
Introducing Decision Rights
This is where a clear framework for decision rights becomes your most powerful tool. In simple terms, decision rights explicitly define who has the authority to make specific decisions. It’s a formal agreement about who needs to recommend a course of action, who must agree to it, who will perform the work, who needs to provide input, and, crucially, who gets to make the final call. This isn't just about delegation; it's a structured approach to distributing authority that eliminates ambiguity. By defining these roles, you replace guesswork with clarity, ensuring that processes don't stall because no one knows who owns the decision.
A Simple Framework: RAPID
One of the most effective and widely used models for clarifying decision rights is Bain & Company's RAPID framework. The acronym stands for the five key roles in any decision-making process: Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, and Decide. Let's break it down: Recommend: This person or group is responsible for gathering information, analysing it, and proposing a course of action. Agree: These individuals have veto power over the recommendation. Their agreement is necessary before the decision moves forward. This role is often assigned to experts in legal or compliance. Perform: This is the person or team who will execute the decision once it's made. Input: These stakeholders provide the necessary information and perspectives to the 'Recommender' to ensure the proposal is well-rounded. However, they do not have a formal vote. * Decide: This is the single person with the ultimate authority to make the final choice and commit the organisation to action. For any given decision, there should only be one 'Decider'.
Putting It Into Practice
Implementing decision rights doesn't have to be complicated. Start by identifying the most common or critical decisions your team faces. These could be related to budget allocation, project priorities, hiring, or client communication. Create a simple matrix with decisions listed in rows and team members' names in columns. For each decision, assign the RAPID roles. Who is the 'Decider'? Who needs to provide 'Input'? Not every decision needs every role assigned, but clarity on 'Recommend' and 'Decide' is paramount. This exercise isn't about rigid bureaucracy; it's about creating a shared understanding of how work gets done efficiently. The process of creating this matrix itself can spark important conversations and reveal hidden bottlenecks in your team's workflow.
Communicating the New Structure
A framework is useless if it lives only in a document. Once you have mapped out the decision rights, you must communicate them clearly to your team. Frame this as a move to empower them, not to create red tape. Explain that the goal is to increase speed, foster ownership, and allow you, as their manager, to focus on removing bigger obstacles and advocating for them at a higher level. Be open to feedback and be prepared to adjust the framework as the team evolves. The goal is to build trust, and that comes from consistent application and open dialogue. By trusting your team with decisions, you give them opportunities to grow and develop their own skills.
