A clearer picture of who decides what

By the end of this engagement, you'll have a written record of how decisions currently move through your company — not how the chart says they should, but how they actually do. You'll also have a short, specific list of the two or three decisions where a little more clarity would likely help the most.

What you choose to do with that record is yours. Some companies use it to redraw a role or two; others simply find it useful to have the pattern named out loud for the first time.

It's a familiar shape: two managers each assume the other will make the call, so a decision sits unmade for longer than anyone intended. Nobody is quite at fault, and everybody is a little frustrated. Over time, this kind of quiet stall becomes part of how the company runs, easy to miss because no single moment feels like a crisis.

Often the org chart was drawn early, before the company reached its current size, and nobody has revisited it since. What's holding decisions back usually isn't a lack of talent or effort — it's a mismatch between formal roles and the informal habits that grew up around them.

We start with a written exercise, completed separately by each manager, asking plainly who they believe decides what across a set of common decision types. Doing this apart, rather than in a group interview, tends to surface the honest picture rather than the polite one.

We then compare the answers and bring the differences into a joint session — three hours, structured but unhurried — where the group can look at the pattern together and talk through what surprised them.

The written exercise takes each manager roughly twenty minutes and can be completed at their own pace before the session. The session itself is held in one sitting, with breaks as needed, and is facilitated so that no single voice dominates the discussion.

Expect the conversation to be candid but not adversarial — the goal is to compare perceptions, not to assign blame for where they differ. Most groups find the session brings relief as much as discomfort: naming an unspoken pattern is often easier than living inside it unnamed.

The method relies on comparing separately gathered perceptions rather than a single shared narrative, which tends to reveal mismatches a group interview would smooth over. Progress is measured by whether the responsibility grid, once built, actually gets used and updated in the following months — a simple, honest indicator of whether the exercise landed.

A realistic timeline: the written exercises typically take a week to collect, the session follows shortly after, and the written record is delivered within a few days of the session.

If, after the first conversation, this doesn't seem like the right fit for your situation, there's no obligation to proceed. The initial conversation itself carries no cost or commitment, and it's simply there to help you decide.

Getting started is simple: send a short message through the contact form, and we'll arrange an initial conversation to confirm the scope fits. From there, we'll agree a timeline for the written exercises and schedule the joint session at a time that works for your team.