You record the rationale for a strategic choice by documenting, at the moment of deciding, what the external picture looked like (trends, regulation, competitor moves) and how the executive team viewed that at the time. Reconstructing afterwards is the problem, not the solution: memories adapt to the outcome, and after a reorganisation or a disappointing quarter, no one remembers exactly who thought what and why.
The executive team of a logistics company with 120 employees decides in the autumn not to invest in a second location. A year later, when a competitor does capture that market, the question is asked: why didn't we do that? The minutes of that meeting record a decision, not a rationale. No one can say with any precision anymore whether it was about cash flow, doubt about market growth, or an executive who simply had no confidence in it. The reconstruction that follows is an opinion about the past, not a record of it.
This is the pattern at most companies with between 50 and 300 employees: decisions are recorded, the weighing that led to them is not. As a result, a strategic choice cannot be distinguished from a gamble that happened to pay off.
A rationale that holds up consists of two parts that are recorded separately. The first part is the outside picture: which trends, regulation and competitor moves were at play at the moment of the choice. The second part is the inside picture: how the executive team assessed that outside world at the time, per executive, not as an average.
At a software company with 80 employees, it turned out afterwards that three of the five executives saw an upcoming legislative change as urgent and two did not. The decision to still wait with a compliance investment was therefore not a unanimous view, but a majority view with a minority that turned out to be right. Had that been recorded, the next decision could have gone faster: the spread was already known, the discussion did not have to start from scratch.
It is tempting to summarise a strategic choice as a single position: "the executive team saw it this way." But the spread between individual executives is precisely the part that explains why a decision is reconsidered later. If a CFO and a commercial director were already far apart five years ago in their assessment of a market risk, and that was recorded, then a later change of course is not an inconsistency but a logical continuation of a difference that was always there.
This is also where the question of who should take part in a strategy review becomes relevant: if not everyone who helps determine the decision also contributes their position, part of the spread is missing and the rationale looks fuller afterwards than it actually was.
A strategic decision is often confused with the plan that follows it, but it is useful to know what the difference is between a strategy and a plan: the plan describes what is going to happen, the rationale describes why that direction was chosen at the time. A plan can be adjusted without the rationale changing; the rationale only changes if the external picture or the internal picture changes. Anyone who does not record that distinction throws away the reason for the original decision every time the plan is adjusted.
Moreover, the rationale is never a snapshot that remains valid forever. What to do when the market changes faster than the plan is described on this page, and the same principle applies to the rationale: if the external picture shifts, that is a moment to record it again, not to let the old rationale run on.
Recording does not work as a one-off exercise after a difficult boardroom discussion. It works as a fixed part of every strategic meeting: before the decision is made, the external picture is stated and every executive is asked to give their position on the axes that are relevant to the company. At a manufacturing company with 200 employees, this now happens twice a year, separate from the regular planning cycle, precisely because regulation and market movements do not wait for the budget calendar. How regulation gets onto the executive agenda structurally instead of incidentally at a deadline is worked out on this page.
A first indication of where your executive team currently stands is available with the free mini-test: ten questions that give a pressure-profile indication of where the external picture and the internal picture diverge. This is not a substitute for a full record, but it shows whether spread is already visible within your team before that spread becomes a problem.
Once it is clear which themes are at play and where opinions within the executive team diverge, the next question follows naturally: what that means concretely for who picks up which task, how many hours that costs and which systems are involved. That translation from decision agenda to tasks, hours and responsibilities is exactly what the werkscan on ftetoai.com is for.
Stel uw vraag. Vaak zit de echte vraag een laag dieper — daar mag ik naar vragen.
Answers come from this site’s knowledge base. Not tailored advice, and not a scan of your company.