Roles and Responsibilities are Unclear

When people say “roles and responsibilities are unclear,” the obvious response is usually to create more clarity: better role definitions, a RACI, a team charter, or more detailed documentation. But what if the roles are already clearly defined? In this episode of _Is That Really the Problem?_, we unpack the different problems that can hide underneath role confusion, including unclear decision rights, overlapping team boundaries, shared-service models, differences in team composition, and the limits of trying to define ambiguity away. They also explore when RACIs are useful, why process maps can sometimes reveal more than role descriptions, and why teams may need stronger ways of working through ambiguity rather than simply adding another layer of documentation. The conversation offers a practical way to think beyond the role description itself and focus on the specific points of friction that may be making collaboration harder than it needs to be.