What is a decision, really?

It is NOT an action, NOT a state change, it’s NOT approval metadata.

A decision has 5 components - let’s call it a Decision Frame (decision_frame):

• Situation (situation) - state of the world as understood at the moment
• Option Space (options) - all considered options (not all possible ones)
• Evaluation Logic (logic) - policies, culture, precedent, individual judgement
• Authority (authority) - who has it to take the call / influence / override (in case)
• Commitment (commitment) - the choice now made - codified through enterprise tools

Enterprise System of Records (SORs) only capture the commitment - they are actually obsessed with capturing this last part.

authority is also captured in some form or shape through reporting hierarchies, RBAC, decision and escalation matrix as part of SOPs – though a lot of it can’t be mapped to each and every decision taken. Also, there could be an unintended influence because of corporate power dynamics than formal authority - that's how the real world works.

Let’s look at 1 - 3 – least captured of the lot and usually are NEVER linked to the final commitment:

• Situation - it gets captured on emails and customer support tickets, unstructured data (eg. WIP product roadmap or say comments in AOP documents) and sometimes on social media (a customer getting vocal about your product/services). For product teams - it might be a feature priority discussion, for account management team - it could be the renewal discount approval to achieve a certain AOP goal. It also exists outside of emails, in direct 1-on-1 calls or meeting rooms.
• Option Space - these are either discussed in meetings, or are in the minds of the decision maker – probably the least recorded among the 5
• Evaluation Logic - some of these are captured (or atleast the essence and intent) through policies, SOPs, culture docs, precedents - but often they lack any clear evaluation logic. These are missed as they are not really codified / captured to be evaluated.

The core problem with these 3 continues to remain - none of these (even if captured in some form or shape) are ever linked to commitment and that's the primary reason why we miss Context and it is almost impossible to reach autonomy in its truest form.

I will try to map everything I explain to the Decision Frame (decision_frame)

Why do enterprises lose decisions by default?

Because they are running on state machines and NOT reasoning machines.

SORs do not have historical context, point in state machines (commitment) – know what is true NOW.

I think this is fine for accounting but for autonomy - it's a disaster.

Human judgement evolved outside software

Enterprises evolved long before software could model:

• Exception handling
• Tradeoffs
• Power dynamics (even if no authority - well impossible to model, may be)
• Precedence

… and all it translates to:

“It looks good to me”, “we have done this before, just do it”, “the decision is already made, you can check the status on the CRM”

These are Decision compression mechanisms – we literally compress the long story (situation, options, logic) into a tiny outcome which is commitment. Once the decision is enacted – alternatives collapse, context decays, intent becomes ambiguous, narrative gets rewritten.

All we keep is the final commitment and throw away the reasoning.

Why is it really important to capture Decision Frames?

Because without Decision Frames (actual enterprise context):

• You cannot build true autonomy
• Agents cannot reason, only execute [no precedents]
• Policy becomes rigid instead of contextual
• ‘AI copilots’ remain shallow UI layers

Autonomy requires replaying reasoning, not just executing outcomes.

How do we really capture Decision Frames?

Let’s first understand different stages in decision making:

Stage A: Pre-formal decision

• Happen in meetings, calls, whiteboards, intuition
• Language is fuzzy
• Authority is implicit
• Alternatives are fluid
• Often framed as “alignment” not “decision”

These decisions are ontologically real but digitally invisible.

Stage B: Post-formal decision

• Happen inside workflows
• Require explicit approval
• Trigger irreversible state changes
• Leave audit trails

These decisions are digitally legible but often semantically poor.

Stage B is at least partially captured by enterprise systems today.

Stage A - despite being where real judgment happens, remains almost entirely invisible.

We believe the best way to capture all the parts of the Decision Frame is to capture through the following:

1. Enterprise Context - the institutional memory built over time - starting with what exists today, capturing decision frames over time, and evolving the institutional memory effectively, target is to build the digital twin for the enterprise
2. Internal Apps built over Enterprise Context - have the ability to sit between human sensemaking and formal system execution and thus have the highest leverage surface to capture decision frames. These apps help in capturing the shape of reasoning before it translates into action (commitment)
3. Agent orchestration on existing enterprise systems - coordinates action across tools to capture the additional context before the commitment gets captured in SORs. Humans forget - these agents don’t (.. and these actions continue to enrich Enterprise Context), helps to evolve these agents facing similar situations and reasons much better the next time.

Enterprises are decision making organisms - every moment is a Decision Frame in their life. These 3 put together have a potential to make that digital twin for the enterprise. Enterprises are very early in their adoption journey and it will be interesting to see how this industry evolves.