Speed up your team's decisions

March 18, 2026

Hey Everyone,

Think about the last decision in your team or company that took way longer than it should have.

In a lot of cases, the delay has nothing to do with how complex the decision is. It comes from something simpler – nobody was clear on who builds the recommendation, who makes the final call, and who carries it out afterward.

Three frameworks exist to make those roles explicit: RAPID, DACI, and RACI.

Today, we're walking you through each one, when to use which, and the most common pitfalls to avoid.

You might have this problem if…

Before we get into the frameworks, here's a quick way to tell if unclear decision rights are slowing your team down.

• The same decision keeps coming up in multiple meetings, but nobody closes it
• Work is waiting because someone needs approval, but the person who's supposed to give it doesn't know that
• Leaders get pulled into decisions that shouldn't need them
• Small decisions take as long as big ones because there's no rule about what needs formal sign-off

If two or more of those sound familiar, keep reading.

RAPID, DACI, and RACI – which one do you need?

Each framework fits a different kind of decision, so it's important to pick the right one.

RAPID is built for high-stakes, cross-functional decisions where someone genuinely needs veto power – decisions that carry real financial or legal risk, like pricing changes or market-direction calls.

It was developed by Bain & Company and names 5 roles:

• Recommend (builds the case),
• Agree (validates the proposal; these individuals have veto power and must sign off, but should be limited to legal, risk, or security),
• Perform (carries it out).
• Input (provides expertise),
• Decide (makes the final call),

RAPID works when you keep the number of people who can block a decision very small. But when that limit isn't enforced, it fails.

DACI fits decisions that come up repeatedly across product, engineering, or tooling teams.

Originally developed at Intuit and now widely used at Atlassian, it has 4 roles:

• Driver who pushes the decision forward,
• Approver who signs off,
• Contributors who add expertise,
• Informed parties who stay in the loop.

If your team regularly makes similar decisions (which platform, which vendor, which feature to prioritize), DACI gives you a repeatable structure without a heavy process.

RACI is best for making sure nothing gets missed during delivery on complex projects with a lot of moving parts and handoffs, like onboarding flows or multi-team rollouts.

It answers who does the work (Responsible), who owns the outcome (Accountable), who needs to be asked along the way (Consulted), and who needs to know when it's done (Informed).

RACI is less about making a strategic call and more about keeping execution moving.

And sometimes you don't need a framework at all. Apple runs its culture around a simpler idea – the Directly Responsible Individual, or DRI, where every action item in every meeting has one person's name next to it. GitLab and HubSpot use the same approach.

If a decision is easy to reverse and low-risk, skip the framework and just name one owner.

Before you roll anything out

Bain's guidance on RAPID is to apply it to high-value decisions, not everything.

The DACI authors say the same about small, low-impact calls. When teams try to map every decision into a framework, the result is what some consultants call 'RACI theatre' – the process costs more time than it saves.

Start with the 2-3 decisions that keep coming up in meetings without getting resolved.

For each one, get clear on who builds the recommendation, who makes the final call, and who carries it out. You can pick the right framework later. Naming those 3 roles is the part that matters most.

Go deeper

👉 Bain & Company: RAPID Decision Making – RAPID explained by the people who built it, with guidance on when to use it and how to limit veto roles.

👉 Atlassian: DACI Decision-Making Framework – How Atlassian runs DACI, with a step-by-step walkthrough and templates.

👉 Atlassian: RACI Chart Guide – A clear explanation of RACI with practical advice on when to use it and how it differs from DACI and RAPID.

Coming up tomorrow

Tomorrow, we'll look at why the gaps between your meetings are doing more damage to your focus than the meetings themselves, and 4 calendar changes that fix it.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. Was this useful? Let us know with "yes" or "no" – we read every response and it shapes what we write next.