The Decision Support Memo

Article by Herb Rubenstein

Introduction

It is often harder to defend or explain the rationale for a significant decision than it is to make the decision in the first place. All decisions in an organization should be internally consistent and therefore the rationale for one decision often impacts what the actual decision will be in a later matter.

Defending a decision or explaining its rationale cannot be done only when pressed hard by opposition or resistance to the decision. The defense or rationale of a decision is actually part, the last part, of the decision making process itself. If you cannot defend the decision or give it a cogent rationale, implementation is hopeless and the organization will be harmed significantly in the future when the next decision has to come down and the prior important decision was based on fluff.

This short article gives a simple framework for writing down in a coherent manner the key aspects of the problem/opportunity faced by an organization, the decision itself, and the rationale for the decision. This memo can often, after the decision has been made, be written in ten minutes, so there is never the excuse that “we did not have time to write the decision memo.” A library or file folder of decision memos is a valuable asset to the organization and all decision makers and all decision implementers in an organization. You can number the Memos sequentially or file them by subject matter. However, it is important to keep all of them in one file folder as well.

The Key Elements of the Memo

1. The issue explained

2. Description of what problems the matter is causing

3. The decision to fix the problem

4. The rationale behind the decision

5. The expected response to the decision

6. The expected impact of the decision

7. Section for follow up to see if the decision worked as expected.

Conclusion

If this memo is prepared and agreed to by all stakeholders, or at least understood by all of them, even those who voted against the decision, then you are well along the way to explaining the rationale in a consistent, coherent, defensible manner. This memo can be expanded to include sections of the other possible decisions that were considered and why they were rejected. However, to streamline the memo, the eight sections above will promote alignment in your organization in a manner that might not be possible to achieve with no such memo ever being written and different people in the organization making up different rationales for the same decision in front of different elements of the organization.