The Areas of Responsibility Chart
Assign one clear owner to every recurring company action
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 96%
The Areas of Responsibility Chart translates an organization into an explicit inventory of work and ownership. Michelle's team maintains a large spreadsheet listing every company action, from deciding whether a brand deal is worth accepting to taking out the trash, and identifies who owns each one. A role's high-level purpose then connects to concrete decisions: the chief creative officer defines creative tone and thesis, oversees story, checks brand materials, and approves edits; the head of production assembles crews and handles permissions, insurance, logistics, cash flow, and partner coordination after an episode is greenlit. The mechanism is useful in a small team because broad titles and collaborative effort can otherwise obscure accountability. Listing the actual actions exposes gaps, overlaps, and decisions that have no clear owner.
Origin
Michelle Khare learned the Areas of Responsibility Chart from The Great CEO Within and adapted it into a spreadsheet containing hundreds of responsibilities for her company.
Core principles
- 01Titles alone do not define operational ownership
- 02Small and strategic actions both need explicit responsibility
- 03Clear macro ownership should connect to concrete approvals
- 04Department heads can expand capacity around a tight core
How to run it
- 1
Inventory company actions
List what the company repeatedly decides, produces, approves, maintains, and cleans up. Work from major strategic choices down to mundane operations.
Pro tip Use verbs that make the action observable.
Watch out Do not stop at department names or job titles.
- 2
Assign the owner
Name the person responsible for each action so that accountability does not disappear into a collective 'we.'
Watch out Collaboration does not remove the need for clear ownership.
- 3
Define each role's thesis
State the overarching result each leader protects, such as a cohesive creative tone or a functioning physical production.
Pro tip Use the thesis to resolve edge cases in the action list.
- 4
Connect macro to micro
Map the role's broad purpose to specific approvals and tasks, from brand materials to edit notes or crew insurance.
Watch out A grand title without concrete decisions leaves the chart decorative.
- 5
Review at project changes
Update ownership when a project is greenlit, the core team expands, or a new recurring operation appears.
Pro tip Check whether temporary project staffing changes who executes without changing who remains accountable.
In the wild
Garrett, the chief creative officer, owns the creative tone and thesis across episodes, post-production, brand materials, and events. That macro responsibility includes directing stories and approving edits at a detailed level.
→ The company protects a cohesive story and consistent quality across multiple creative surfaces.
Once an episode is greenlit, Nick assembles the crew and manages insurance, permissions, logistics, cash flow, and coordination with branded partners. For the seven-marathons project, this included local crews across continents.
→ A complex physical production has an identifiable operational owner.
Common mistakes
Listing titles instead of actions
An org chart can show hierarchy while leaving the actual decisions and chores unowned.
Ignoring mundane work
Small recurring actions such as taking out the trash still create friction when nobody owns them.
Hiding behind collective language
Calling every result a team effort is accurate but insufficient for assigning operational accountability.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for a compact team whose members wear several hats and scale up around projects.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal as a static org-chart exercise that never reaches specific recurring actions.
From the transcript
“We have a giant spreadsheet called the Areas of Responsibility Chart, which I learned from a book called The Great CEO Within.”
“In that book, it it details actually making a giant chart that outlines every single action that the company takes.”
“And this can go from in our case something as big as decides if brand deal is worth taking all the way down to takes…”
From the episode
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Michelle Khare