A section-by-section decision memo skeleton covering decision requested, options, evidence, risks, dependencies, recommendation and reversibility, with guidance on writing each part.
A decision memo exists to make a group decide, once, on the record. This skeleton keeps it to a page or two and gives every section a defined job. The full template is below, free and ungated.
Last reviewed 3 July 2026 · Free and ungated
Before the memo reaches its approvers, selected senior operators from the Global Board can read it the way your board will, confidentially and in time to change it.
Get independent perspectivesSlides let a presenter control pace and skate past weak points; a memo sits still and takes questions. Writing the decision down in prose exposes gaps that survive perfectly well in bullet points, which is exactly why the discipline is worth the discomfort. If the memo cannot be written, the decision is not ready to be made.
| Memo section | How to write it |
|---|---|
| Context | Three sentences maximum on why this decision exists now. If the reader needs more background than that, attach it. Do not open with a history lesson. |
| Decision requested | One sentence, specific enough to be minuted: what is being decided, for how much, by whom, effective when. If you cannot write this sentence, stop drafting and go find out. |
| Options considered | Two to four real options including "do nothing" or "do less". For each: one line on what it is, one line on why it was or was not chosen. Options added to make the preferred one look good will be spotted. |
| Evidence | The three to five facts the recommendation rests on, each with its source and age. Distinguish what is known from what is believed: approvers forgive uncertainty, not disguise. |
| Risks | The two or three ways this goes wrong that would actually matter, each with the mitigation and its cost. A risk list with no expensive mitigations means the risks were not taken seriously. |
| Dependencies | What must be true or delivered elsewhere for this to work: other teams, systems, approvals, market conditions. Name the owner of each dependency. Unowned dependencies are how approved decisions stall. |
| Recommendation | The author's actual position, stated plainly, with the one consideration that most nearly changed it. Hedged recommendations transfer the thinking back to the room and waste the memo. |
| Reversibility | What it costs, in money and time, to undo this after approval, and the last date at which changing course is still cheap. This single section changes how much scrutiny the decision deserves. |
| Decision and conditions (completed in the meeting) | The outcome as minuted: approved, rejected or deferred, any conditions attached, and the named owner of each condition. Left blank on circulation; filled in before the meeting ends. |
Send the memo at least three working days before the meeting and open the meeting by asking who has read it. Silence answers the question. The author is whoever wants the decision made; the memo is theirs alone to draft, though the evidence section should survive a hostile check by someone who did not write it. Decisions of consequence deserve ten minutes of silent reading at the top of the meeting rather than a re-presentation of what was circulated.
For decisions that are expensive to reverse, the cheapest insurance is a reader with no stake in the outcome seeing the memo before the approvers do. Senior operators who have made the same class of decision will find the soft evidence and the unpriced risk in an afternoon. It is considerably better to hear it from them, confidentially, than from your board. That pre-read is what a client brief to Digital Advisory's Global Board provides.
Size the instrument to the decision. Reversible decisions within existing budgets need only this memo. Major commitments need a full business case underneath, with this memo on top as the one-page ask that the meeting actually decides on.
Anyone who does not want the decision made, and anyone too junior to state a real recommendation. The format depends on an author willing to take a position. A memo written to be inoffensive fails at the only thing it is for.
Almost always because the final section was never filled in, or conditions were attached verbally and not minuted. The completed decision-and-conditions row is the memo's enforcement mechanism; without it you have a discussion paper.