Por Qué los Equipos Olvidan Decisiones (Y Qué Hacer al Respecto)

The Universal Problem of Decision Amnesia

Every growing team eventually hits the same wall. Someone asks "Why did we decide this?" and nobody can remember. Not because the decision was bad, but because the context that made it sensible has evaporated.

This isn't a documentation problem. It's a context preservation problem.

Every Team Knows This Moment

• "Why did we do this again?"
• "Who decided that?"
• "That constraint doesn't apply anymore, right?"
• "We already discussed this, but I don't remember why…"

Slack forgot. Notion scattered it. Docs buried it.

So decisions keep coming back to life—costing meetings, time, and trust.

The Psychology Behind Decision Amnesia

Our brains are optimized for the present, not the past. When we make a decision, we have perfect clarity about:

• The constraints we're working within
• The alternatives we considered
• The tradeoffs we accepted
• The people involved

Six months later? All of that context has been replaced by newer, more pressing information. The decision remains, but the reasoning is gone.

Why Traditional Documentation Fails

Wikis, Notion pages, and shared documents are designed for information, not decisions. They're flexible—which is exactly the problem.

None of them reliably answer "Why was this decided?" six months after the fact.

Who Feels This Pain First?

Small teams (5–10 people) feel memory loss faster, not slower. When you're a small team, every reopened decision costs a larger percentage of your time.

The roles that feel it most:

• Founders — strategic decisions that shaped the company
• Tech Leads — architectural choices that define the system
• Engineering/Product Managers — policy calls that govern the team
• New Hires — who need to understand "why" without scheduling history meetings

The Solution: Treat Decisions as First-Class Objects

The fix isn't better discipline—it's better tooling. A decision record should capture:

1. Title — What was decided (searchable)
2. Context — Why this decision was needed
3. Constraints — What limited the options
4. Alternatives Considered — What else was on the table
5. Decision — The final call
6. Owner — Who made the call (one person)
7. Date — When it happened

This isn't bureaucracy. This is institutional memory.

Getting Started

Start small. The next time your team makes a significant decision, take 5 minutes to record it properly. Include the context that feels "obvious" right now—it won't be obvious in 6 months.

Your future self will thank you.