Decision rights define who has the authority to make which decisions — and designing them clearly is one of the highest-leverage operating model improvements a business can make.
Decision rights are the explicit allocation of authority within an organisation — defining who has the power to make which decisions, who must be consulted, and who must be informed. They are the invisible architecture of organisational performance.
Most businesses do not have explicitly designed decision rights. Decisions are made based on informal norms, political dynamics, and the personal preferences of individual leaders. The result is a decision-making environment that is slow, inconsistent, and often unfair — where the same type of decision is made differently depending on who is involved.
The quality and speed of decision-making is one of the most important determinants of organisational performance. Businesses that make good decisions quickly outperform those that make slow decisions or poor ones. Decision rights design is the operating model lever that most directly affects decision quality and speed.
Poorly designed decision rights manifest in predictable ways: decisions that should be made at the front line are escalated to the executive team; decisions that require cross-functional alignment are made unilaterally by one function; the same decisions are made differently by different managers; and leaders spend their time in meetings approving decisions that should have been made without them.
The most commonly used tool for decision rights design is the RACI matrix — Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed. RACI is useful for mapping process-level decisions but has limitations for strategic and governance-level decisions, where the distinction between Responsible and Accountable is often unclear.
Loop Business Consulting uses a more nuanced framework that distinguishes between: decision authority (who can make the decision without approval); decision input (who must be consulted before the decision is made); decision notification (who must be informed after the decision is made); and decision escalation (when and to whom decisions must be escalated).
The process begins by identifying the decisions that matter most — the decisions that most affect the business's performance and that are most frequently made poorly or slowly. For each decision, we define the decision rights using the framework above, and we test the design against the strategic objectives of the business.
The result is a decision rights framework that is explicit, consistent, and aligned with the operating model — creating the clarity and accountability that enables fast, high-quality decision-making at every level of the organisation.
Contact Loop Business Consulting at [loopbc.com.au](https://www.loopbc.com.au) to discuss decision rights design for your business.
Loop Consulting Group works with Australian businesses scaling from $5M to $50M. If this question reflects a challenge you're facing, let's talk.