What is the DACI technique and how to reach a decision during a discussion by using it?

First we need to synchronise beforehand the way we are going to discuss things.

Let’s deep dive in the DACI technique!

The DACI abbreviation comes from the participants and their roles during a discussion: 👇

Driver – responsible to get the decision made
Approver – makes the decision
Contributors – have voice, but no vote
Informed – informed about the final decision

So, before you start any critical discussion, you’ll need to decide who will be the driver – who will be the one who will lead us to actually come to a decision, and not only to discuss things. Maybe this will be the person who facilitates the meeting and be more cautious and aware of the disengaged people during the discussion, or the ones that get constantly interrupted; who are the ones that are speaking too much, and so on. Like that, the driver will be focused on leading the discussion so that everybody stays within the needed role and that way the driver will be the one focused on getting to a united decision.

The approver can be any member of the team despite their experience or expertise – it just has to be one single person! The key thing here is that the approver should be chosen by the team before the start of the discussion. Their role is to take into consideration everyone’s opinions and make a decision at the end.

The contributors are the ones with experience & expertise about the discussed matter and so their opinions should be taken into consideration. The contributors should express their own ideas on solving the problem, and so, they have a “voice” but they don’t have a “vote” on the decision – again, the approver decides.

And then there’s the last role – the informed. These are all the people that should know about the decision so that they can implement it – they are affected by this decision. And the most important thing here is to remember to inform them in a timely manner – we’ve all been witnesses of miscommunication and not informed team members – let’s not be participants, or even worse – the reason, for those awkward situations! 🙃

In conclusion, the idea is the team to be synchronised before the meeting starts and using the DACI technique will get everybody on the same page.

This will help making a unanimous decision during those crucial discussions. Try it! 😉

– The Gang