The running record that makes accountability visible. Every decision gets a line — owner, date, context, review date. No more 'I thought we decided that.'
Decisions vanish. Not because they're unimportant — but because no one writes them down. A team makes a clear call on Monday. By Thursday, half the room remembers it differently. By next quarter, someone reopens the same question, unaware it was already settled. The problem isn't decision-making — it's decision-keeping.
The Decision Log is a simple, shared register where every meaningful decision gets recorded the moment it's made. One line per decision: what was decided, who owns it, when, why, and when to revisit. It takes thirty seconds to fill in — and it eliminates the single most common failure mode in organizations: relitigating decisions that were already made.
"If a decision isn't written down somewhere anyone can find it, it wasn't made — it was discussed."
The Decision Log operationalizes two ED3 principles that most organizations struggle with. It enforces visible, named ownership for every decision (P2) — not a team, not a committee, one person with their name on the line. And it forces decisions onto the record (P5), which means silence can no longer masquerade as agreement and half-remembered conversations can no longer substitute for actual commitments.
The log also serves as an early warning system. When a decision has no review date, no one is checking whether it worked. When the "owner" column is blank, no one is accountable. When the same topic appears twice, the team is relitigating instead of progressing. The log doesn't just record decisions — it reveals patterns in how your team makes them.
Create a shared document — a spreadsheet, a Notion database, a wiki table — with these columns. The format matters less than the discipline of filling it in every time a decision is made.
Log immediately, not later
The moment a decision is made — in a meeting, over async, in a 1-1 — someone adds it to the log. "We'll capture it later" means it won't get captured. Make logging part of closing the meeting, not a follow-up task.
One log per team, not per meeting
Decision Briefs live with individual meetings. The Decision Log is the long-term register — one shared place where all decisions accumulate. Think of the brief as the receipt and the log as the ledger.
Review the log monthly
Once a month, scan the log as a team. Which decisions have upcoming review dates? Which owners have left the team? Which decisions are being quietly ignored? The monthly scan takes 10 minutes and prevents weeks of drift.
Use it to close relitigation
When someone says "should we revisit X?" — check the log first. If the decision was made with clear context and no conditions have changed, the answer is no. The log gives you a graceful way to hold the line.
The Decision Log isn't just a record — it's a diagnostic tool. After a few months, patterns emerge that tell you where your decision culture is strong and where it's breaking down.
Same decision appearing twice? — Your team is relitigating. Check whether the original context has changed. If not, enforce the original call and figure out why it didn't stick.
Owner column frequently blank? — You're making decisions by committee. Nobody is accountable. Assign owners retroactively and fix the pattern going forward.
No review dates on major decisions? — You're making permanent commitments in a changing environment. Add review dates to anything strategic, anything involving money, or anything the team debated heavily.
Dissent column always empty? — Either your team agrees on everything (unlikely) or people aren't comfortable recording disagreement. Both are worth investigating.
Download the template
A clean, tool-agnostic Decision Log you can adapt to any system — spreadsheet, Notion, Confluence, or a simple shared doc.