The four roles and their boundaries
| Role |
Holds |
Does not hold |
| Driver |
Owns the process: frames options, gathers input, sets the date the decision will be made, chases it to conclusion |
The decision itself: driving is not deciding |
| Approver |
Makes the call. One named person, who also owns the consequences |
An obligation to achieve consensus before deciding |
| Contributors |
Provide expertise, data and options before the decision |
A vote, or a veto dressed as a concern |
| Informed |
Are told the outcome and what it changes for them |
A late seat at the table once the decision is made |
The decisions DACI is built for
DACI pays for itself on decisions that are significant, cross-functional and stuck: a build-versus-buy call that has cycled through three steering committees, a pricing change that marketing, sales and finance each believe they own, a vendor selection where the evaluation finished weeks ago but nobody will sign. The common feature is that the analysis is done and the blocker is role confusion. DACI removes the ambiguity that lets everyone defer.
Running a decision through it
- Name the Approver first, before the options are debated. If naming one person is politically impossible, that is the actual problem, and no framework will hide it.
- Give the Driver a decision date, not just a role. An open-ended DACI is a committee with new vocabulary.
- Have Contributors submit input in writing before the decision meeting. It keeps expertise in and re-litigation out.
- Record the decision, the rationale and the dissent in a short memo. The Informed get the memo, not a second debate.
Illustration: a stuck platform decision
A software company has spent a quarter debating whether to replace its billing system or extend it. Engineering, finance and customer operations each hold a piece of the answer and a preference. Under DACI, the CFO is named Approver because the risk is ultimately financial; a senior product manager becomes Driver with a six-week deadline; engineering leads, the finance controller and the operations head are Contributors with written submissions; the wider leadership team is Informed. The decision lands in five weeks. Nothing about the analysis changed. Deferral simply stopped being available.
How consensus culture defeats DACI
DACI fails without much noise, and almost always in the same directions.
- The Approver role is given to a leadership team "collectively", which reintroduces the consensus requirement the framework exists to remove.
- Contributors behave as approvers, and a Driver who lacks seniority treats every objection as a blocker. The decision date slips indefinitely.
- The real approver stands behind the named one: everyone knows the CEO will overturn the call, so the DACI is a formality and Contributors lobby upward instead.
- A DACI is created retroactively to document a decision already made, which teaches the organisation that the framework is decoration.
What independent input adds to the Contributor column
A DACI disciplines who decides, but it does nothing about the quality of what Contributors supply. Internal contributors share the same incentives, history and blind spots. On decisions where the downside is large, adding independent perspectives from selected senior operators as an external contribution gives the Approver something no internal function can: input from people who have made this exact call elsewhere and carry no stake in this one.
