Why your organisation needs a decision log and how to start one

A decision log is a record of significant decisions made by an organisation: what was decided, who made the decision, what information it was based on, and what the expected outcome was. Most organisations do not keep one. The cost of that absence is higher than most people realise.

What a decision log is not ¶

A decision log is not a meeting minutes document. Meeting minutes record what was discussed. A decision log records what was decided, and it does so in a specific format that makes the decision reviewable later. The distinction matters because most meeting minutes are written in a way that makes it impossible to reconstruct the actual decision from the record.

A decision log is also not a project management tool. It does not track tasks or owners or deadlines. It tracks the decisions that generate those tasks, so that when a task turns out to be wrong, you can trace it back to the decision that produced it and understand why that decision was made.

Why the absence of a log is expensive ¶

Without a decision log, organisations repeat decisions they have already made. They relitigate settled questions because nobody can remember that the question was settled, or why. They make decisions that contradict earlier decisions because the earlier decisions were never recorded in a findable form.

The cost is not just time. It is the erosion of organisational trust. When people cannot rely on decisions staying decided, they stop committing to them fully. That hesitation compounds across every subsequent decision that depends on the first one.

How to start one that people actually use ¶

The format matters less than the habit. A simple shared document with five columns is enough to start: date, decision, decision-maker, information it was based on, expected outcome. The key is that it is updated at the point of decision, not retrospectively.

Oliver sends a one-page decision log template to all new clients as part of the onboarding for any engagement. The template is available free to newsletter subscribers.

A decision log does not make decisions better on its own. It makes the conditions for better decisions more likely to persist after the engagement ends.