Blog
Reconstructing a decision nobody wrote down
“Why do we charge this customer less?” Nobody knows. It was decided two years ago, probably on a call. Here's how to get most of the answer back in under an hour.
What you can recover, and what you can't
Kalpataru Sahoo ·
A decision leaves a trail even when nobody records it. Things change on a certain date: an invoice goes out at a new price, a contract gets a new clause, a feature stops being mentioned. That trail usually lets you recover three of the four things worth knowing:
- When: almost always recoverable, from the first time the new state appears.
- What: usually recoverable, from the email, invoice or document that changed.
- Who: usually recoverable, from who sent the email and who was in the meeting.
- Why: sometimes. If the reason was written in a message, you can find it. If it was said out loud, you need a person who remembers.
Knowing that up front saves time. Spend minutes on the first three and save the real effort for the fourth.
Six steps, about an hour
1. Find the first sign of the new state. Don’t search for the decision. Search for its effect: the first invoice at the new price, the first email that mentions the new policy, the first contract version with the clause. That gives you a date, and everything else hangs off it.
2. Search a window around that date. In Gmail, combine a person or topic with a date range, for example from:client.com pricing after:2024/03/01 before:2024/04/15. If the word you need could be anywhere in a long thread, AROUND finds words close together: discount AROUND 10 annual. In Outlook, search the sender with from: and narrow the dates with the search filters.
3. Check the calendar for that window. Look for a meeting with the client, a board call or an internal review a few days before the first sign. The attendee list tells you who to ask, and attached notes sometimes have the reason in them.
4. Open the document’s version history. In Google Docs, File → Version history → See version history shows who changed what and when. Word files on OneDrive or SharePoint have their own version history under File → Info. Comments that were resolved are often where the argument happened.
5. Ask one person, with the evidence in hand. “Do you remember why we did this?” gets a shrug. “On 12 March we moved them to the old price, the day after this call with you, Sam and their finance lead. What happened in that call?” gets an answer. Ask especially what else was considered. That’s the part no system kept.
6. Write it down now, and label it. Record it in the four-field format from the decision log template: date, decision, what was ruled out, why. Then add one honest word next to the reason: confirmed, likely or unknown.
A worked example
Northwind Labs (fictional) is reviewing its pricing. One customer pays 30% less than everyone else, and the person who set it up has left.
- The billing system shows the lower price started with the invoice dated 1 April 2024. That’s the first sign.
- A Gmail search from that customer’s domain between March and mid-April turns up a thread called “renewal” in which they mention a competing quote.
- The calendar shows a call with their operations lead on 26 March.
- The proposal’s version history shows the price was edited on 27 March, with a resolved comment: “matching for 12 months, revisit at renewal.”
- The cofounder, shown all of this, remembers the rest: they also considered a smaller discount with a two-year term, and turned it down because the customer was about to be featured as a case study.
Result: a 12-month price match that was meant to be reviewed in 2025 and never was.
Forty minutes of searching turned “nobody knows” into a decision with a reason and an expiry date. That’s what makes it safe to change.
Where Memoraxis fits
Steps two to four are searching three tools for one story. Memoraxis keeps the emails, meetings and documents that come through your connected accounts in one memory, so you can ask “when did we change pricing for this customer, and what was said around it?” and get an answer that shows the emails and meetings it came from.
The limit is the important part. It only knows what came through after you connected it, so for a decision made two years ago the six steps above are still the way. It also won’t invent a reason nobody wrote or said in a channel it can see. Step five still needs a person.
FAQ
- How far back can I realistically reconstruct a decision?
- As far back as the email, calendar and document history goes, which is usually years. What gets harder with time isn't finding the date. It's finding someone who remembers the options that were rejected.
- What if I can't find the reason at all?
- Write down what you can show (the date and what changed) and mark the reason as unknown. An honest gap is more useful than a confident guess, because the next person will treat whatever is written as fact.
- Is it worth reconstructing old decisions?
- Only the ones that are about to be argued about again: a price someone wants to change, a policy a new hire is questioning, a supplier you're about to replace. Reconstructing everything is a project nobody finishes.
- How do I stop having to do this?
- Keep a short decision log from now on: the date, the decision in one sentence, what was ruled out, and why. Four fields, written when the decision lands.
Next time, the trail is already in one place
Connect a mailbox and a calendar. From that point on, what comes through them is remembered and connected, so you can ask what was decided and when.
Get started free