Main idea

A clear decision can be contested: it says what was chosen, for what reason, by which body and at what moment. It offers a grip for criticism because it offers a grip at all.

A blurry formulation spreads responsibility across the participants, the sessions, the minutes, the successive validations and the cautious phrasings. When the result disappoints, everyone contributed a little, nobody really wanted it, and each can explain after the fact why their own interpretation was reasonable. The failure exists, but it has no author.

This isn't a side effect: it is the soft decision's main political advantage. The cost it produces later is diffuse, therefore hard to assign, therefore not very threatening to those who let it through.

Why it matters

This explains the persistence of a mechanism everyone criticizes in meetings: it is rational from each participant's point of view, even when it is costly for the whole.

It also gives a criterion of attention for wordings: a decision that lets you name neither an author nor a moment wasn't merely badly drafted, it was made uncontestable.

Nuances and limits

Attribution has a dark counterpart: an organization that punishes attributable failure harshly teaches its managers to stop producing clear decisions. Dilution is then a rational protection, and the remedy lies with leadership, not with the wordings.

And some decisions really are collective: demanding a single author where the commitment was shared manufactures a figurehead.

Open questions

• How do you make a choice attributable without turning its author into a target, in an organization that sanctions visible error?