July 6, 2026
Hi Everyone,
Decisions usually come back when someone didn’t like the answer, the team didn’t trust how the answer was reached, or nobody agreed on what evidence would make the team review it.
That means more meetings, slower execution, and mixed direction for the people doing the work.
Today’s issue is about how to use it to stop the same decision from coming back again with a Decision Memo.
What makes a decision hold
For a hard leadership decision, the memo needs four things:
Start with the decision itself: Write the decision in one clear sentence, then test it: could someone outside your team understand exactly what will change, who it affects, and by when? If not, tighten it until they can.
Name the decider: One person needs final authority. Others can give input, challenge the thinking, and help shape the call. But one person owns the final answer.
List the options the team considered: Two to four options are enough for most decisions. For each option, write the trade-off in plain English.
- What does the team gain?
- What does the team risk?
- What does the team give up?
This makes the cost of the decision visible. It also makes it harder to reopen the debate later, as if the trade-offs had never been discussed.
Write the assumptions behind the recommendation: List the specific conditions that must hold for this recommendation to work, keeping each one concrete and testable.
Each assumption should state what needs to be true and how you will know if it isn’t, so it can be checked against real outcomes.
Add a clear rule for when to review the decision: This helps avoid people trying to reopen it after the meeting. Agree on what you’ll measure, what result would trigger a review, and when you’ll check it.
For example:
“If close rate drops by more than 10% for 2 consecutive months, we review the pricing change.”
Try this today
Use the one-page decision memo template before your next big decision.
Send it at least 24 hours before the meeting. That gives the team time to read, challenge the logic, and bring better objections into the room.
After the meeting, update the same memo with the final decision, the owner, and the review rule. Now the decision has a record the team can return to, instead of relying on everyone’s memory of the meeting.
Go deeper
👉 Ian Nowland: Using 6-page and 2-page documents to make organizational decisions — a useful breakdown of Amazon’s memo process and the ways a memo review can end.
👉 Bain & Company: RAPID Decision-Making — useful when the team is unclear about who gives input and who makes the final call
👉 Atlassian Team Playbook: DACI Decision-Making Framework — a simple way to name the driver, approver, contributors, and people who need to be kept informed.
👉 How to Write a Decision Memo in 10 Minutes — Amanda S's compressed four-section format (Decision, Options, Assumptions, Decision Rule) with a few examples. The fastest way to try this approach.
Coming up tomorrow
Tomorrow’s issue is about how to stop running demos like walkthroughs and start with the result your buyer needs to see first.
Have a great week!
P.S. Does your team have a written record for big decisions, or is it buried in AI meeting notes?