Why decisions escape review
A project review implicates a plan; a decision review implicates the people who made it, which is why calendars conspire against the second kind. By the time the results are in, the sponsor has changed roles, the context has been forgotten, and everyone has a version of events in which they were sceptical all along. The review below is designed to be run anyway: six to twelve months after commitment, or at the review date the decision log recorded, whichever arrives first.
The review, area by area
| Review area |
The question to answer |
What to write down |
| The decision as recorded |
What exactly was approved, according to the log or minutes rather than memory? |
The original decision sentence, verbatim. If no record exists, that is finding number one |
| Expected versus actual |
What did the case promise by this date, and what has materialised? |
Both numbers side by side, with sources. Resist the urge to explain before both are on the page |
| Assumptions that held |
Which of the recorded assumptions proved true? |
List them plainly. They show what the organisation is good at judging, which is worth knowing too |
| Assumptions that broke |
Which failed, when did we first know, and when did we act? |
The gap between knowing and acting, in weeks. This gap is usually the most expensive number in the review |
| Evidence discounted at the time |
What signal existed before the decision that was set aside, and why? |
The specific report, person or number that was waved away, and the reasoning used to wave it |
| How the dissent aged |
Who disagreed before commitment, and how does their argument look now? |
Their case as they made it then, not paraphrased. If nobody dissented on a major call, record that as its own finding |
| Cost of the delay to this review |
What has it cost to learn this now rather than three months ago? |
Decisions compounding on a broken assumption, contracts renewed, people moved. Dated where possible |
| What we would ask earlier next time |
Which two or three questions, asked before commitment, would have changed the decision or its timing? |
Phrased so the next team can lift them directly into their own checklist |
Judge the decision, not the outcome
A sound decision can produce a bad result, and a reckless one can get lucky, so the review must ask whether the choice was reasonable given what was knowable at the time. That is why the assumptions and discounted-evidence rows carry more weight than the results row. Held to this standard, the review stays useful and people keep cooperating with it. Without it, the exercise becomes a hindsight tribunal, and the organisation learns only that attending reviews is dangerous.
How reviews get defanged
- The original sponsor chairs the review, and the agenda bends politely around the question of whether the decision was right.
- The review is scheduled for "when things settle down", a date that never arrives, and the eighteen-month version reviews a different organisation.
- Scope narrows to implementation ("execution challenges") so the choice itself is never examined, only how well it was carried out.
- Findings are filed rather than fed forward: nothing changes in how the next decision of the same class gets made, which was the entire point.
- Only failures get reviewed, so success is never examined for the luck inside it, and the organisation doubles down on habits that happened to work once.
When the review needs a chair from outside
Some reviews cannot be run honestly from inside: the decision was the chief executive's, the losses are still politically live, or the people who dissented have since left. An outside chair changes what can be said in the room. Senior operators who have made the same class of decision elsewhere can also do what insiders cannot: distinguish bad luck from bad judgement, and say which of your "unforeseeable" surprises were foreseeable. Digital Advisory arranges exactly that reading, confidentially, through a brief to the Global Board.
