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Not another reply-all decision.
Email has real virtues for a decision: it is written, it lets people answer once they have thought, and it leaves a trail. That trail is also the problem. By the fortieth reply the argument has split into forks, the attachment everyone quotes is the third of four versions, and the decision is whatever the most senior person wrote last.
Typical email thread
- spreads the argument across replies and forks
- treats the last reply as the answer
- reads silence as consent
- loses track of which attachment was final
- is hard for a newcomer to follow
Argumont
- keeps the question and options in one record
- marks which claims were ever checked
- names the condition that would reopen it
- supports Challenge the Verdict
- can record the Outcome later
What email does well
Writing slows people down in a useful way. An email asks the sender to finish a thought, and the recipient can answer after reading the numbers rather than in the heat of a meeting. For gathering views from people in different time zones, it remains hard to beat.
How a thread decides by accident
Three habits do the damage. The last reply reads as the conclusion, especially when it comes from someone senior. Silence is taken as consent, though people stay quiet for many reasons, including never having read the thread.
And the people copied in halfway through see only the replies that followed, so they end up agreeing with a summary of an argument they never saw.
Writing a decision email that holds
Military writers have a convention called bottom line up front: the conclusion goes in the first sentence and the support follows. Apply it to decisions by stating the choice, its owner, the date, the options considered and the fact that would reopen it.
If you want objections, set a deadline for them and say that silence by then will be read as agreement. Then the silence means something.
The thread in a Decision Room
Bring the thread's question and options into a room and the argument is gathered in one place. Each option has a Champion, the Challenger tests the claim the late replies leaned on, and Inspector marks whether that claim was ever supported by anything attached. The Verdict states which option leads and what would change it, and the Human Decision is recorded beside it with the date and the person who made it.
A colleague who joins next year can read that record in five minutes, without forwarding chains or a copy list.
Sixty-three replies about a lease
A firm spends 11 days and 63 replies on whether to renew its office lease, 6,000 square feet at $38 a foot a year for three years, or move to 4,000 square feet at $34. Renewing costs $684,000 over the term. Moving costs $408,000 in rent plus $95,000 to fit out and move, $503,000 in all, a saving of $181,000.
The thread ends when a senior partner writes that badge data shows 70% of desks in use every day, more than two-thirds of the space could hold, so the firm should renew. No badge data was ever attached. Inspector marks the claim unverified, and the Verdict favors the move unless the badge records, once produced, confirm the figure.
Bring Argumont a Decision worth challenging.
Start with a paid 60 day pilot on your own real Decisions.