What is the RAPID framework?
RAPID is a decision-rights framework, associated with Bain & Company, that separates five roles in a major decision: who Recommends, who must Agree, who Performs the outcome, who provides Input, and who ultimately Decides. Its distinctive move is splitting the recommender from the decider.
What do the RAPID roles mean?
The Recommend role does the analysis and proposes a course of action. Input roles supply expertise the recommender must gather. Agree roles hold a genuine veto, typically legal or compliance, and should be rare. The Decide role is a single accountable person who commits the organisation, and Perform is whoever executes once the decision is made. The letters are not sequential; the acronym is just memorable.
When is RAPID worth the overhead?
RAPID suits large or high-stakes decisions crossing several functions, the kind that big organisations run over weeks: market entries, reorganisations, major capital allocations. For a 50 to 500 person company's weekly stream of decisions, assigning five roles per call is usually too heavy; a lighter frame like DACI plus a consistent decision record captures most of the value.