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July 28, 2025
“I want to be up to date on everything that's going on...
That's it, is that clear?”
What could be worse than always having your boss on your back who always wants to be aware of your every move,
and who gets anything spelled out in the procedures?
What are the I's for in RACI matrices ?
Is it really to illustrate lines of hierarchical reporting?
If you already use RACI tables in your procedures, you have certainly, like me, come across a column that only contains I, for “informed”.
It happened to me recently while studying an audit procedure.
The quality committee was put in place.
In the column, there were only I.'s.
Broadly speaking, “Big Brother Is Watching You”.
To begin with, you forget about a committee in role.
Take a look at this article on removing your committees from your RACI tables, and you will understand:3 good reasons why you should kick committees out of your RACI.
But above all, what does this column where there are only I's really mean?
It's representative of reporting, a hierarchical line or what do you know.
So, should all procedures then have to include all the lines of reporting to all committees of all kinds?
Frankly, we didn't leave the inn.
Let's then ask ourselves the question of the proper use of I in RACI matrices, and see that in 3 points.
The I in the RACI should be seen as a relay stick in athletics between runners, and not as a coach's binoculars.
The I for “informed” is used to indicate another role of the RACI : “I have finished my task, you can start yours”.
Concretely, for a good use in the RACI, on a task, Put an I in front of the role that will have to complete a task later but needs the previous task to be completed.
For example, in the case of the audit procedure, the person responsible for the audit schedules must create the audit schedule.
Several roles must validate the audit schedule, with the quality manager who will be responsible for the task.
And the auditor must then be “I”, informed, that the schedule is validated, because he can then start preparing the first audit that comes on the schedule.
We will therefore paste an I for him in the “validate the schedule” task.
The I clearly materializes the transmission of information, a “GO” for the next task.
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Like the example I experienced, you are going to have pressure from those who know nothing about writing procedures to put roles with an almost full column of I.
It's NO, NO, and NO!
The people who push you to that suffer from permanent control syndrome.
Explain kindly to them that a procedure supporting a process is not a reporting schema.
Moreover, one day I will probably write you an article on the representation of reporting waterfalls in an organization.
Just imagine...
You put I's everywhere for a role with existential problems.
In the process, at some point, you forget to inform this Big Brother.
What are you doing?
Are you opening a quality deviation?
No!
So the I must materialize only the information transfers that are necessary for the people downstream.
If the I is for giving a GO, then you have an incredible opportunity when you do a RACI, to use it to reset your entire system of automatic notifications made by your computer systems.
Put the automatic notifications only for the I you put in the RACI.
Your teams will receive fewer automatic emails and the ones they receive will be more relevant to them.
Check with your teams who are in charge of documentation and training that You have removed all the Big Brother in your procedures (and share this article with them).
In doing so, take the opportunity to clean up the notifications.
On our website, you can access some of our DOC&training simplification training.
So see you on the other side!
See you soon