---
id: "concept-goal-disentanglement"
type: "concept"
source_timestamps: ["§ Mistake 1"]
tags: ["goal-setting", "conflict-resolution", "planning"]
related: ["claim-broad-goals-cause-conflict", "framework-four-mistakes"]
definition: "The process of breaking down broad objectives into concrete, measurable subgoals to prevent overlapping claims of ownership and resolve RACI conflicts."
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"
---
# Goal Disentanglement

**Goal disentanglement** is the prerequisite process of breaking down overly broad organizational objectives (e.g., 'Create a strategic plan for product line X' or 'Manage company headcount') into **specific, measurable, time-bound subgoals** *before* assigning decision rights.

When goals are too broad, multiple executives each believe they own the decision, producing ego-driven turf wars and oversized, unproductive meetings — the mechanism captured in [[claim-broad-goals-cause-conflict]]. By **iterating between goals and roles** — and refining goals whenever a RACI conflict surfaces — teams often discover that competing stakeholders actually want to own *entirely different subgoals*.

**MedTech example.** Disentangling headcount decisions revealed that:

- the **CFO** should own the budget,
- the **CHRO** should own proposal size and urgent requests, and
- **business-unit leaders** should own filling preapproved roles.

This is the repair for Mistake 1 in [[framework-four-mistakes]]. It presumes fluency with [[prereq-c-suite-roles]] and [[prereq-matrix-organizations]].