Decision log: a free template that keeps decided topics decided
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Three months after the workshop the same discussion starts again. Two new people sit at the table, the arguments are the old ones, and nobody can say with certainty what was decided or why. The decision was made, it was just never written down with its reason. The decision log fixes that with one line per decision.
Why one line is enough
A decision log is not a document, it is a list. Each decision gets one row: date, decision, reason in one sentence, who decided, what would make you look again, and status. That is all a colleague needs to understand a decision without having been in the room.
It pays off the first time somebody reopens a closed topic. You scroll to the line, read it out, and the meeting moves on. It is the simplest form of innovation memory a team can keep.
The template
| Date | Decision | Reason | Decided by | Revisit when | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14.10.2026 | Run a refill station pilot in the Hamburg store for eight weeks | Customers asked for it in both store surveys and the station fits the existing shelf space | Head of Retail | The eight weeks are over and the refill volumes are in | Approved |
| 14.10.2026 | Subscription for consumables parked | Billing cannot handle recurring payments until the system migration is complete | Product lead | The billing migration is live | Parked |
| 14.10.2026 | No packaging redesign this year | The current pack passed the last shelf test and the redesign would cost more than the expected uplift | Marketing director | A retailer asks for a different pack size | Rejected |
Copy the table into whatever your team already uses and start with the next decision. If you want a seventh column, put it in the reason sentence instead.
Rules that make it work
- The reason is one sentence a new colleague understands. No abbreviations, no "see the slides". If it needs a second sentence, it is probably two decisions.
- "No" and "not now" are decisions and get a line. A rejected idea without a logged reason will be pitched again by somebody who was not there.
- The log is read at the start of the next decision meeting. The last five lines, out loud, two minutes.
- A decision without an owner goes back. If no name fits in the "decided by" column, nothing was decided. The topic returns to the agenda.
- Revisit triggers are facts, not dates alone. "When the second store opens" tells you exactly when to look again. "Q2" only tells you somebody wanted the topic off the table.
Where to keep it
One place the team opens anyway: the project board, the team wiki, the pinned folder. Not an e-mail thread, not the facilitator's notebook.
Use the same list across workshops, one log per team rather than one per meeting, because the value sits in the lines from six months ago. Tools like IdeaHone keep decisions as their own entity next to the ideas, but a plain table works as long as everybody can find it.
- Create the log before the first decision meeting. An empty table with six columns, where the team already looks. Put the link in the invitation.
- Write the line in the room while the decision is fresh. Then read it out loud. If somebody says "that is not what we agreed", you have just saved the discussion in three months.
- Assign the owner. One name, not a department. The owner answers when somebody asks why.
- Set the revisit trigger. Ask the group what would have to happen for you to look at this again. Write the answer as a fact, add a date only if the fact has one.
- Read the last five lines at the start of every decision meeting. Two minutes, no discussion. It reminds the room what is closed and shows which triggers have fired.
- Review parked decisions quarterly. Check every "parked" line against its trigger. Fired means back on the agenda, and a trigger that will never fire means the honest status is "rejected".
The reason for a no is the most valuable line in the log. It stops the idea coming back unchanged, and it tells the next person exactly what would have to be different for a yes.
How a decision log turns into a diary
- Logging discussions instead of decisions. "We talked about pricing" is not a line. If nothing was decided, write nothing, or log "undecided until the pricing data is in" and treat that as the decision.
- Three paragraphs per line. Context, options and risks belong in the workshop documentation. The line is what a colleague reads in ten seconds.
- The log nobody reads. A log that is written but never opened is a diary. The two-minute read-out is not optional, it is the mechanism.
- Decisions made in the corridor. The most important ones often happen between meetings. Whoever hears "we decided to" asks "is it in the log?" If not, it goes in today or back to the next decision workshop.
The log is also the backbone of a one-page innovation report to the board. The decisions of a workshop reach it through the follow-up checklist, and the decision a workshop has to serve is fixed beforehand in the workshop brief.
Never lose an idea between sessions
IdeaHone follows every idea from first mention to decision, across all your workshops and teams.
What is a decision log?
A decision log is a running list with one line per decision: date, what was decided, the reason, who decided, what would make the team revisit it, and the status. It is kept across meetings so that decided topics stay decided.
What should a decision log contain?
Six columns are enough: date, decision, reason, decided by, revisit trigger and status. The reason and the revisit trigger are the two columns teams skip most often, and the two that stop old discussions from starting again.
How is a decision log different from meeting minutes?
Minutes record what happened in one meeting, including discussion and open points. The decision log records only decisions, one line each, across all meetings, and it is read before the next decision rather than filed after the last one.
