---
id: "claim-broad-goals-cause-conflict"
type: "claim"
source_timestamps: ["§ Mistake 1"]
tags: ["goal-setting", "conflict"]
related: ["concept-goal-disentanglement"]
confidence: "high"
testable: true
speakers: ["Lindy Greer", "Jennifer Jordan", "Maxim Sytch"]
sources: ["governance"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-governance"
originDay: 7
articleStem: "hbr-sig-48-decision-rights"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/07/what-companies-get-wrong-about-decision-rights"
sourceTitle: "What Companies Get Wrong About Decision Rights"
---
# Broad Goals Generate RACI Conflicts

When teams assign decision roles **before goals are broken into concrete subgoals**, discussions degenerate into ego-driven turf wars: multiple executives fight for ownership. Disentangling the goals often reveals that competing stakeholders actually want to own *different, specific* subgoals.

The remedy is [[concept-goal-disentanglement]]; this is Mistake 1 in [[framework-four-mistakes]].

**Confidence: high · testable.** *Enrichment:* the procedural advice (define the work before assigning roles) is well established — Project-Management.com: 'Don't build a RACI matrix before you have a full team, a defined scope, and a project plan'; echoed by Monday.com, CIO, and Indeed. The specific 'ego-driven turf war among executives' framing is experiential but consistent with research on role conflict, goal ambiguity, and status competition in matrix organizations (Galbraith's Star Model).