---
id: "quote-soccer-game-d7"
type: "quote"
source_timestamps: ["¶4"]
tags: ["metaphor", "failure-modes"]
related: ["claim-dictated-spreadsheets-fail"]
speaker: "Manager at a global e-commerce company"
speakers: ["Manager at a global e-commerce company"]
quote: "Decision rights are like the position plan for a children's soccer game—a nice plan on paper that no one understands or remembers."
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"
---
# RACI as a Children's Soccer Game

> Decision rights are like the position plan for a children's soccer game—a nice plan on paper that no one understands or remembers.
>
> — *Manager at a global e-commerce company*

A manager's critique of how decision-rights frameworks are typically implemented: theoretically tidy, practically useless. It dramatizes [[claim-dictated-spreadsheets-fail]] — the RACI matrix as an artifact everyone abandons — and sets up the reframing in [[contrarian-raci-as-conversation]] and the fix in [[concept-co-created-racis]].