Most leadership teams agree that decision quality is one of the biggest drivers of performance. Yet in practice, many companies still make decisions through side conversations, scattered files and inefficient back-and-forth between stakeholders. It is frustrating for everyone involved. 

A high-functioning decision system gives a company repeatability. It reduces emotional bias. It strengthens governance without slowing anyone down. And when it works, it becomes one of the quiet engines of growth. MDs feel alignment. CFOs get real visibility and improved governance. Teams know what is expected of them and they feel confident on how to deliver. 

Here is what that system looks like when it is built properly, and it’s exactly how we think about building Riff as an AI decision making engine. 

1. Inputs

Every decision begins with information, but most organisations underestimate how much inconsistency in inputs drives inconsistency in outcomes. At the core of preparing a business case or making a decision, we are relying on data to project what the future outcome of the decision will be. There is already enough uncertainty in the process of trying to forecast out what will happen, let alone if you’re doing it with poor-quality inputs.

High-quality inputs share three traits:

1. They are transparent and auditable, so stakeholders can understand where they came from i.e where they drew from historic data, or industry averages or did we need to make an assumption because better data wasn’t available? It’s not about ‘correct’ it’s about being clear. 

2. They separate facts from interpretation, reducing the amount of actual and perceived bias from the process.

3. They provide sufficient context to allow people to understand how the number has been derived and to enable them to understand any inherent limitations or uncertainty associated with the inputs. 

When inputs are standardised, teams stop wasting time explaining the basics over and over. Leadership meetings shift away from “what are we even talking about” and “where did those numbers come from” to  “is this the right move for the business.”

2. Logic

Once inputs are clear, the organisation needs shared logic. In most companies, this is where issues begin. One department uses margin expansion as their driver for decision making. Another uses customer experience. Another uses speed or risk reduction. None of these approaches are wrong, but together they create incoherence. There are usually tradeoffs when it comes to business decisions not being clear on what the business is actually optimsing for.

Shared logic doesn’t mean forcing everyone to think in the exact same way (that would be very bad). It means defining the handful of questions every decision must be able to answer. Examples include:

 • What problem are we solving?
• What options were considered?
• Why is this the best option for the business?
• What assumptions drive the expected impact?

As decision making is powered by logic, the less the organisation defaults to personality or vibe based decisions, and the more they apply clear rationale, the better. The assumptions might ultimately be incorrect but at least stakeholders are clear on what the basis was for making the decision in the first place. It sounds like common sense, but you know as well as I do how often this isn’t the default approach. 

3. The Financial Lens

Finance often becomes the accidental backstop for the whole organisation. Without a clear decision system, everything flows to the CFO, even when it shouldn’t. People want a second opinion. They want reassurance. Or they simply aren’t sure what level of scrutiny is required and escalate ‘just to be safe’.

A financial lens, used correctly, doesn’t turn every decision into a spreadsheet. It anchors the conversation in value. It ensures that initiatives are weighed in the same currency. It also protects the business from the natural optimism that can creep into any proposal.

A healthy financial lens is simple. It clarifies the cost of the decision. It sets expectations on impact. It frames uncertainty honestly. And it keeps the conversation grounded in trade-offs. When teams know exactly what questions they must answer, the finance team moves from bottleneck to strategic partner. Decision quality rises and decision friction drops.

For more mature organisations, applying a financial lens to a decision may require detailed financial modelling and comparison of the projected outcomes against agreed internal thresholds. For example “Does the projected internal rate of return (IRR) exceed 10 percent?” or “Does the project's Net Present Value (NPV) exceed $100,000?”. 

For smaller organisations, applying the financial lens to decision making might be a lot more straightforward and could involve stakeholders asking questions like “Do the projected financial benefits outway the costs?” or “How long will the project take to pay back?” which is more right sized.

Regardless of the size of the organisation, there are benefits in both the efficiency and quality of decision making if teams are able to approach the process using a financial lens, not the only lens of course, but certainly a key one. 

4. Guardrails

Guardrails - or the authority matrix - determines who decides, what they can approve and when escalation is actually required. Without guardrails, organisations fall into two predictable traps. Either everything gets escalated “just to be safe,” or decisions drift into the hands of whoever cares the most. Both patterns slow the business down and weaken accountability.

Good guardrails are light, not bureaucratic. They define decision rights by size, risk and strategic significance. They clarify when cross-functional consultation is required versus when a team can move on its own. And they help leaders distinguish between an approval that confirms the logic has been applied and an approval that signals the decision itself.

What this looks like in practice can be different depending on the organisation, but typically it involves a process or document that outlines the stakeholders in the organisation that have authority to approve spend at different levels. Often approval thresholds are based on the level of seniority within the business and may also take into account other considerations i.e is the project capex or opex, is it budgeted or unbudgeted, or does it have safety or environmental implications.

Establishing guardrails helps formalise the decision system and reduce friction and ambiguity. Once a business case has been ideated then every one is clear on what needs to happen in order for the project to be approved and get underway. 

5. The Decision

A decision is not the moment a document is signed. It is the moment the organisation understands what is happening, why it is happening and what happens next.

In companies without a decision system, decisions rarely feel final. Teams revisit them. New voices appear late in the process. Leaders ask to re-examine the thinking. Valuable time is lost re-litigating calls that were supposedly made weeks earlier.

In a high-functioning system, decisions are explicit. They include a clear articulation of the chosen path, the reasoning behind it and the commitments required to execute. People know who made the call and why. They know what success looks like. They know what risks were accepted and which assumptions might require monitoring.

Clarity gives decisions durability. Without it, even good choices fall apart under the weight of second-guessing.

6. The Audit Trail

Many organisations believe they have an audit trail because they have email threads, approval logs or shared folders full of documents. In reality, they have fragments. None of it reliably tells the story of how a decision was made.

A real audit trail serves two purposes:

1. It protects governance and; 

2. It builds organisational intelligence. 

Governance matters because leaders are ultimately accountable for the choices the company makes, and it ensures that decisions are aligned with the interests of the organisation’s stakeholders.

Organisational intelligence is built through the feedback loop of making a decision, documenting the rationale, monitoring the actual performance against the projected performance, then reviewing the cause of any differences between the actual and projected. This process allows the organisation to chisel its decision system and to calibrate for real world outcomes. It also allows the organisation to pattern-match future decisions with past decisions as another consideration to get to a faster, higher quality outcome.

A good audit trail is simple to create and easy to navigate. It captures inputs, logic, financial considerations, guardrails, the decision itself and who approved it. It also records the context and risks. When done well, it becomes an asset. Leaders can see patterns, spot blind spots and understand how the organisation makes choices in practice rather than theory.

Why This Matters Now

Most companies don’t realise they lack a decision system because the symptoms feel ordinary. Approvals take too long. People escalate unnecessarily. Decisions don’t stick. Teams circulate back through the same debates. Finance becomes referee rather than partner. These problems feel cultural, but they are structural.

A high-functioning decision system gives leaders a common language and gives teams a predictable path to move ideas forward. It also lays the foundation for AI-driven insights and decision making. The system creates the scaffolding and AI accelerates the work.

For Managers and CFOs, this isn’t about control. It is about alignment that allows teams to move faster without cutting corners and losing the critical context around why the decisions were made.

Most organisations don’t need more meetings or more documentation. They need an actual system that works for both do-ers and approvers. Once leaders see that, the path forward becomes much clearer.