The Challenge
As businesses grow, complexity creeps in, quietly at first, then all at once.
Suddenly, people are hired without truly understanding what’s needed. Questions like: Do we really need another person for these actions? Do these tasks require a full-time role? Could existing team members absorb them?
go unanswered.
The result is a familiar pattern of pain:
▪️ Role distortion — people aren’t sure who’s responsible, so critical actions slip through the cracks.
▪️ Overworked and underworked teams — workload imbalances cause burnout, disengagement, or quiet hiding behind busyness.
▪️ Purposeless roles — when people can’t see how their work contributes to success, motivation fades.
What begins as a structural problem soon becomes a cultural one, confusion breeds frustration, and frustration slows everything down.
The SlightlySkew View
Few things drain productivity faster than unclear responsibilities. In large organisations, the myth persists that endless documentation will fix the problem. In smaller businesses, people “figure it out on the fly.”
Both approaches lead to the same place — confusion, wasted energy, and avoidable mistakes.
At SlightlySkew, we believe every role must have a clear purpose, supported by defined accountability.
That’s why we use a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) framework to anchor every action in clarity.
Each role is enriched with:
▪️ Purpose: Why this action exists.
▪️ Accountability: Who owns it.
▪️ Information flow: What’s needed to perform it, and what it produces.
▪️ Context: Where and when it happens.
▪️ Metrics: How is the outcome measured
When these dimensions are visible, actions connect seamlessly across the business — and confusion gives way to confidence.
The SlightlySkew Approach
Every action in a business sits within a larger system — paying a supplier, for example, depends on higher-level actions like selecting that supplier or issuing an order.
Clarity, therefore, must exist at every level.
Our approach builds on the foundational thinking of John Zachman, who in the 1980s introduced the Zachman Framework — a powerful schema for organising and understanding business systems.
SlightlySkew takes this thinking further.
We begin by identifying every action within the business and structuring them using Functional Decomposition (FD)— a mathematical approach that breaks complex operations into clear, manageable layers.
Each layer represents purpose: the reason an action exists and how it contributes to the next.
We then enrich each action with the necessary dimensions — roles, responsibilities, timing, and place — creating a living, structured view of your business.
This process transforms chaos into clarity. Every action finds its purpose. Every role finds its place.
The SlightlySkew Outcome
At SlightlySkew, clarity is not a spreadsheet or a job description — it’s a blueprint for performance.
Through our Chart of Works, we map your entire business, from purpose to procedure, ensuring every layer aligns with intent.
The outcome?
▪️ Alignment - across all levels of the business
▪️ Defined accountability - that replaces confusion with confidence
▪️ True collaboration - instead of collision
▪️ Meaningful job descriptions and real operating procedures - your business begins to move with calm, focused momentum.
Everyone knows what to do, why it matters, and how it connects.
That’s the Force of Clarity — where structure replaces confusion, and your team works in harmony toward a shared purpose.
