Roles

What does “Roles” mean in practice?

Here, Leadership asks what Roles changes for the person making, reviewing, or living with a decision. Place Roles inside a workflow you already know. Who provides the input, who uses the result, and who needs to review it? You will turn Roles from an abstract idea into a choice with an owner and a review rule.

After this lesson

• Here, Leadership asks what Roles changes for the person making, reviewing, or living with a decision.
• Use the idea of “Roles” to interpret one realistic situation.
• Explain the limits of the concept and the information that still needs to be checked.

Start with the situation

Understand the situation first. The label can come later.

A central team can protect standards while domain teams contribute context they understand directly. This lesson uses the idea of “Roles” to examine that situation without treating a single term as the answer to every problem.

Here, Leadership asks what Roles changes for the person making, reviewing, or living with a decision. Define roles, team structure, shared services, and how different functions will work together. Connect the term to a decision someone genuinely needs to make.

See how the decision unfolds

Move from the situation to a choice others can review.

Do not rush the choice

Two ways to look at Roles

The stronger choice is the one whose evidence, owner, and limits can be explained, not simply the more sophisticated option.

Visual model

Map the parts before choosing what to do.

Read the diagram as a map of Roles: begin with the context, follow the connections, and inspect the highlighted point before making a decision.

Pause for a moment

What evidence could change this decision?

Answer before opening the discussion. Name one fact and one assumption.

A tempting shortcut

A familiar term can still lead us to the wrong decision.

Why this can seem reasonable

A center of excellence without clear authority can become another bottleneck. This mistake often appears when a label is used before the problem is understood. Write down your assumptions so another person can review them.

How to check it

Place Roles inside a workflow you already know. Who provides the input, who uses the result, and who needs to review it? Begin with what can be observed, then separate facts, assumptions, and open questions.

Try it on your work

Try it with one small piece of real work.

1. Choose one real situation related to Roles.
2. Separate what you can observe from what you are assuming.
3. Write one decision, its owner, and the evidence needed to review it.
4. Name the signal that would make you stop or change direction.

Write two examples that fit Roles and one that does not. Explain the difference in your own words. The larger module activity is: Design an AI operating model for one organization. Keep the first version small enough for another person to review in a few minutes.

Quick practice

Write two examples that fit Roles and one that does not. Explain the difference in your own words. The larger module activity is: Design an AI operating model for one organization.

Summary

• Here, Leadership asks what Roles changes for the person making, reviewing, or living with a decision.
• Use examples and evidence to test your understanding.
• Record the limits, risks, and conditions that should trigger another review.

Continue from here

• Centralized or Federated: Continue the idea from Teams and Operating Models with a closely related example.
• Data Readiness: Connect this lesson to Product Thinking and test the idea in another context.
• Explanation and Recourse: See how the same decision changes when viewed through AI Ethics.

Sources and further reading

• AI Risk Management Framework Playbook: NIST · official-framework. Primary reference for the definition, evidence, or limits discussed in “Roles”.
• People + AI Guidebook: Google PAIR · official-guidebook. Further evidence and context for checking the explanation in “Roles”.
• Rules of Machine Learning: Google for Developers · official-guidance. Further evidence and context for checking the explanation in “Roles”.