Role Clarity Eliminates Friction Between Layers And Peers
Wyeth Pharmaceuticals was in a race. Demand for its autoimmune drug Enbrel had surged, yet decisions about scaling production crawled through overlapping committees. Meetings were crowded, vetoes were vague, and no one felt clear about who owned the final call. Wyeth’s leaders adopted Bain & Company’s RAPID decision roles (1) to untangle accountability. For each critical choice, they named who would Recommend, who must Agree, who would Perform, who should provide Input, and who would Decide. Bottlenecks eased because people knew exactly who had the “D”.
That story illustrates the core point of this article. Role clarity eliminates friction between layers and peers. It is not paperwork. It is a performance system. Google’s Project Aristotle (2) found that “structure and clarity” is one of a handful of factors that consistently show up in effective teams. When people know goals, roles, and plans, they collaborate faster and make better calls.
Now, here is where the Friction to Flow Matrix fits the story and your practice. The Wyeth example revealed friction at the seams. The matrix is a quick way to pinpoint those seams before you prescribe a fix.
Use the Wyeth situation to locate yourself on the matrix. At Wyeth, vertical roles at senior levels existed, yet peers struggled to resolve interface issues. That is Top-down Traffic Jam in the top-left quadrant. Decisions bunched at the top because peer clarity was vague even though layer clarity looked explicit. The remedy was to name decision rights at the seams, which moved them rightwards on the matrix toward Flow.
In your context, start by asking two questions:
How explicit are responsibilities and decision rights across peer teams at the same level?
How explicit are responsibilities and decision rights up and down the chain?
Plot your initiative. If you land in Turf Wars (bottom-left), you likely have duplication and delays because neither vertical nor peer clarity is explicit. If you see Silo Speed (bottom-right), teams move fast internally but cross-layer priorities are confused. If you are in Top-down Traffic Jam (top-left), leaders are clear but peers cannot resolve issues laterally. The target is Flow (top-right), where handoffs are crisp, decisions are quick, and escalations are rare.
Once you have your quadrant, you can choose the right tool. This is exactly how Wyeth shifted. They did not simply ask for better meetings. They made decision rights explicit.
RAPID for landing single decisions
RAPID clarifies who does what so one decision moves quickly and sticks. The roles are Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, Decide. Name a single decider and limit who truly must agree. Contributors with Input are heard without gaining veto power. Performers are lined up before the decision is made, so execution starts without drag.
DACI for keeping multi-stakeholder projects moving
DACI keeps momentum in projects with many stakeholders. It names a Driver to orchestrate the process, an Approver as the single final authority, Contributors who provide expertise, and those to keep Informed once the decision is made. DACI is especially useful across product, marketing, and go-to-market work where milestones and handoffs multiply. For origins, DACI was developed at Intuit as a variant of RACI (3).
To make clarity memorable and repeatable, anchor it in the Leadership Burger. It’s playful, some may argue it could give your leadership more flavour, and it works because it is complete.
If you want to move from friction to flow this month, try this sequence:
Diagnose with the matrix. Plot one live initiative. Name the quadrant.
Pick your tool. Use RAPID to land a discrete call. Use DACI to run the surrounding project.
Make it visible. Publish one-page role charters that state purpose, outcomes, decision rights, interfaces, and success measures.
Measure the shift. Track time to decision, escalation count, and rework at handoffs.
The payoff mirrors both the Wyeth experience and the research. When leaders make decision rights explicit, friction drops at the seams between teams and layers. Google’s Project Aristotle shows that structure and clarity correlate with better team performance (4). Rigorous research links role ambiguity and conflict with lower commitment, which harms performance (5). Diagnose with the Friction to Flow Matrix, then build your Leadership Burger and use RAPID and DACI to shift from friction to flow. That is how you make clarity a habit, not a hope.
I’d love to know your thoughts.
