Why Teams Keep Re-Deciding the Same Things
Scope: Decision continuity
Teams re-decide because decision context evaporates when work moves into tools.
Teams do not re-decide because they forget.
They re-decide because decisions do not persist.
The Illusion of Resolution
A decision is made. Everyone nods. The meeting ends. Work begins.
Days later, someone asks a question that was already answered. Another person makes a choice that conflicts with the original intent. A debate resurfaces. Frustration follows.
The assumption is that someone failed to listen.
That assumption is wrong.
What Actually Happened
The decision never became part of the system.
It existed briefly in conversation and nowhere else. Once work moved into tools, tickets, messages, and tasks, the decision lost its anchor. People encountered artifacts without context and filled gaps with reasonable assumptions.
Re-deciding is not dysfunction. It is a rational response to missing continuity.
Why Memory Is the Wrong Fix
Teams try to solve this with reminders.
Meeting notes. Follow-ups. Pinned messages.
These help temporarily. They do not persist intent. Over time, notes go unread, links get buried, and new people join without context. The cycle restarts.
The system still requires human memory to function.
The Cost of Re-Decision
Every re-decision costs more than the original decision.
It reopens scope. It reintroduces uncertainty. It erodes trust in prior outcomes.
Over time, teams become hesitant to commit. Decisions are softened, hedged, or deferred. Velocity drops, not because people are cautious, but because certainty is fragile.
How Re-Decision Stops
Re-decision stops when decisions are attached to work, not conversations.
When intent travels with execution. When outcomes reference their originating reasoning. When context survives handoffs.
At that point, teams stop arguing about what was decided and start building on it.
Re-decision is not a behavioral flaw. It is a structural signal.
Fix the structure, and the behavior disappears.