decision-memolisted

# Decision Memo Decisions rarely drift because they are hard. They drift because nobody wrote down what was being asked, what the options actually cost, who was deciding, and by when. The same question comes back to the same meeting three times, each time with slightly different framing, and the third discussion is worse than the first because everyone half-remembers the second. The cost is not the meeting time. It is that the decision eventually gets made under time pressure by whoever is in the room, on partial information, with no record of why. Six months later somebody reopens it, and nobody can defend the original reasoning because there is none written down. This skill produces one page whose only job is to end that loop. ## When to use this, and when not to Use it when a choice between named options has to be made by someone else, when a question has come back twice, when a decision needs to survive being revisited, or when you are about to ask for approval of anything with a cost. Do not use it for a decision you can make yourself, which needs a note in the log and nothing more. Do not use it to present a conclusion already reached and unchangeable, which is an announcement and should be written as one. Do not use it when the real problem is that nobody knows who decides; fix that first, because a memo addressed to nobody is an invitation to defer. `structured-problem-solving` covers memo structure and the underlying analysis generally. `meeting-to-decisions`