The DARCI grid is a leaderful organising tool which allows for clarity in the distribution of roles and responsibilities within an organisation.
Overview
This tool helps organizations to create clarity on roles and responsibilities, both in terms of decision making and afterwards regarding accountability for implementation. DARCI is an acronym and it stands for decider (D), accountability (A), responsible (R), consulted (C) and informed (I).
Within a simple grid you list all the tasks you want to assign and you clarify on which level specific people or parts of the organization will be involved in that specific task.
Whether you use it for a project, a campaign or for the overall work done by your group, you can use the grid to have a clear and transparent map indicating task division and participation.
How does this tool support leaderful movements?
A leaderful movement isn’t really that leaderful if it doesn’t find a way to manage ‘getting the work done’. Neither will it be very leaderful if all the work is done by the same person or the same few people or when it is unclear how to decide what to do or who will do it.
One key difference between a ‘leaderful group’ and a so-called ‘leaderless group’ is being transparent and deliberate about how power operates. This implies having clear structures in place for decision making and accountability. Using a DARCI grid enables groups to put such a structure in place.
Using this tool will also support you to make more conscious decisions on roles, responsibilities, involving stakeholders and decision making power, especially if your group so far has been doing this type of work more organically. This might work well for a while, but at some point it can create tensions, install unhealthy and harmful patterns, as well as inhibit the group from performing effectively.
The DARCI grid is a tool which increases a group’s capacity in the competency areas of “power” and “transformative collaboration”.
More detail
Are you done wasting time and energy on frustrating discussion on who should have done what or who should be involved in taking a decision? Well, it’s about time to get your crew together and map it all out.
In the first column you put down all the important work that will have to be done as part of your campaign or project.
Each work item get its own row. In the next columns you will add information on:
- Decider
Who will be deciding on what will be done related to this task? Who has the power to give a green light? This can be either an individual, a working group, or an organ within the organization such as a board or a member’s meeting. - Accountable
Whoever is accountable, will have to make sure that the decision is implemented and respected. If something doesn’t go as planned, they will also account for that. - Responsible
Who will doing work to implement the task? It can be either an individual or a team of individuals. - Consulted
Who will we reach out to in order to request input of feedback? - Informed
Whom will we keep in the loop and inform about progress, without having any say in the process?
Download Template
Explore Further
- Darcy Accountability Grid Tool by Robert Gass
- DARCI decision making framework by Climate Justice Organizing Hub Wiki
- More resources from the Leaderful Organizing Collection
- Organising resources in the Commons Library
- Templates in the Commons Library
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