Decision Memo With a Recommendation
Turns a tangled decision into a one-page memo that states the real options, the trade-offs, and a recommendation with its reasoning exposed.
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Running it, start to finish
- Describe the decision, the constraints and what you genuinely do not know.
- Check section 1 — the decision is often not the one you thought.
- Circulate the memo before the meeting, not during it.
What you get back
The output this produces, every time.
- Re-frames the decision where it has arrived badly framed, which is common and rarely noticed.
- Adds the two options usually missing: do nothing, and wait with an explicit trigger.
- Makes reversibility an explicit column, so cheap reversible bets are not held to the same bar as permanent ones.
Getting better results
Where this usually goes wrong, and how to avoid it.
- Say what the decision-maker cares about. The same analysis is presented differently to someone optimising for speed and someone optimising for risk, and section 5 depends on knowing which.
- Use section 4 in the meeting. 'What would have to be true' converts a preference argument into a factual one, and factual arguments actually resolve.
- Do not soften the recommendation. A hedged memo returns the decision to the room, which is the failure it exists to prevent.
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Written for The AI University. Every prompt in this library is original work — authored, tested and revised here, not collected from elsewhere. 365 of them, free with an account.