Latest / The Promotion Memo with Fexingo: Getting Visibility, Sponsors, and Executive Presence / How One Employee Got Promoted by Building a Decision Log
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to talk today about something that sounds painfully administrative but that, in practice, got someone a promotion inside twelve months. Luna: I'm intrigued. And a little skeptical. What's the tool? Lucas: A decision log. Not a career journal — we covered that in Episode 79. A decision log is a running document where you record the significant judgment calls you make at work, your reasoning, and the outcome. Maria Chen, a mid-level supply chain analyst at a Fortune 500 industrial company, started one in January of last year. By September, she had a director-level title. Luna: Eight months. That's fast. What was she logging specifically? Lucas: Maria's job was procurement for a division that sourced specialty steel components. She made maybe three or four consequential calls a month. Things like: 'Do we approve a price increase from our primary supplier, or do we qualify a secondary supplier in Vietnam?' Or: 'Do we expedite a shipment via air freight to meet a customer deadline, knowing it adds thirty thousand dollars to the cost?' Ordinary trade-offs. But she wrote them down. Luna: And her boss didn't already know about those calls? She was presumably in the loop. Lucas: She was. But here's the thing — most managers see the outcome, not the reasoning. Maria's boss saw that a shipment arrived late. She didn't see that Maria had consciously chosen a slower ocean route because the carbon cost of air freight violated the company's newly announced ESG targets. The decision log made that invisible reasoning visible. Luna: So the log is essentially an artifact that surfaces your judgment. I like that. What format did she use? Lucas: Simple. A shared Google Doc — not a private file. Five columns: date, decision, alternatives considered, rationale, and outcome — even if the outcome was still pending. She tagged her boss and her skip-level as commenters so they could see it update. No more than a paragraph per entry. She spent maybe fifteen minutes a week on it. Luna: And the promotion — did the log itself cause it, or was it just correlated? Lucas: Her director told me directly: when the VP of supply chain asked for candidates for a new group manager role, Maria's name came up. The director pulled up the decision log to show concrete examples of Maria's strategic thinking — the tariff call, the ESG trade-off, a decision to lock in a long-term contract with a smaller supplier that ended up saving the division four hundred thousand dollars. The log was the evidence package. Luna: Right. Because otherwise the director would have had to reconstruct Maria's contributions from memory — and memory is unreliable. So the log is a kind of sponsorship document. Lucas: Exactly. It's not about proving you worked hard. It's about proving you made good calls. There's a difference. A log of effort looks like a timesheet. A log of decisions looks like leadership. Luna: What kind of decisions should someone log? I could see people falling into the trap of logging everything — 'I chose the blue font' style entries. Lucas: Maria's rule was: log only decisions where you weighed at least two viable alternatives and where the stakes were material — time, money, reputation, or risk. She also logged decisions that didn't have a clear right answer, because those show judgment. For example, she logged a decision to NOT push back on a sales team's unrealistic delivery promise, because she calculated that the relationship cost of fighting that battle was higher than the operational cost of scrambling. That's the kind of call that's invisible unless you write it down. Luna: That's actually a great example. It shows political awareness and prioritization. Did she include decisions where the outcome was bad? Lucas: She did. And that's key. One entry: she approved a rush order from a new supplier that ended up producing defective parts. She logged the reasoning — the primary supplier was at capacity and the customer would have missed their launch window — and she logged the lesson learned about qualification protocols. Her director told me that entry was actually the most impressive one, because it showed she wasn't hiding from mistakes. Luna: That builds trust. I'm thinking about how this differs from a career journal. A journal tends to be reflective — 'here's what I learned this week.' A decision log is more like an audit trail of your judgment. Lucas: Exactly. A career journal is for you. A decision log is for your advocates. It's designed to be read by someone else. Maria even added a summary tab at the top that listed her top ten decisions by impact, so a busy executive could scan it in two minutes. Luna: That's smart. So when a promotion conversation happens, the log is ready. How did she introduce it to her boss initially? I can imagine some managers being suspicious — 'why are you documenting everything, are you covering yourself?' Lucas: She started it during a quarterly review. She said something like: 'I've been keeping a log of my major decisions to help me learn from them. I thought you might find it useful for our conversations.' That frames it as a growth tool, not a 'gotcha' file. Her boss was actually relieved — she'd been wanting a better way to track Maria's development. Luna: What about people whose work has fewer discrete decisions? A customer service rep, for instance, might handle dozens of small calls a day. Lucas: Good question. Maria's approach works best in roles with moderate autonomy. But I think you can adapt it. A customer service rep could log exceptions — times when they deviated from the script to solve a complex issue. Or times when they escalated a systemic problem. The key is to capture the moments where you used judgment, not just followed procedure. A log of 'I handled eighty calls' is a statistic. A log of 'I identified that sixty percent of calls this month were about a new billing error, and I created a one-page guide for my team' is a promotion-worthy decision. Luna: So the log also surfaces pattern recognition. That's a strong signal for promotion. What about the risk that the log becomes a burden — another administrative task that nobody asked for? Lucas: That's the biggest failure mode. Maria almost abandoned it in month three because she felt she had nothing to log. She had a quiet month with only one minor decision. I'd say: that's fine. A log with five high-quality entries over six months is better than a log with fifty trivial ones. The discipline is to open the doc once a week and ask yourself: 'Did I make any call this week that I'd want my VP to know about?' If the answer is no, you skip the week. Luna: That feels sustainable. Do you have a template you'd recommend? Lucas: I do. Maria shared hers with me. It's literally a table with those five columns. I'd add one more: 'Impact level' — high, medium, or low. That helps you sort later. But honestly, the format matters less than the habit. The real value is that you're training yourself to think in terms of decisions and trade-offs, which is exactly what executives do. Luna: And that's the deeper point, right? The log isn't just a promotion tool. It's a way of developing the muscle of strategic thinking. The more you write down why you chose X over Y, the more intentional you become. Lucas: Exactly. Maria told me that after three months, she started making better decisions because she was anticipating how she'd log them. She'd think: 'If I choose the expedited shipping, what will I write in the rationale column? Is that a good enough reason?' That self-awareness is gold. Luna: I love that. It's like a forcing function for rigor. Alright, so for someone listening who wants to start a decision log tomorrow, what's the first step? Lucas: Open a blank document. Title it 'Decision Log — '. Create the five columns. Then, for the next decision you face at work — even if it's small — write it down. Commit to doing that for two weeks. After two weeks, look back at what you've recorded. You'll likely see patterns: areas where you're avoiding decisions, or areas where you're making good calls that nobody notices. That awareness alone is worth the time. Luna: And if you're in a role where decisions are rare, you might want to start by logging decisions your team makes — and your input into them. That still shows influence. Lucas: Great point. Influence is a form of decision-making. One more thing: Maria shared her log with her director at the end of Q2, and the director started using it as a coaching tool. She'd comment on entries: 'Why didn't you consider supplier C?' or 'Good call on the tariff hedge.' So the log also became a conduit for mentorship. Luna: That's a bonus. So the log doesn't just help you get promoted — it helps you get better while you wait. I'm sold. Before we wrap, I want to touch on something: we run this show without ads. That's a deliberate choice, and it's only possible because of listeners who support us directly. If you've gotten value from episodes like this one — maybe you've started a career journal or a decision log — you can keep the show ad-free by visiting buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, but it does make a difference. Lucas: Yeah, and we mean that. It's a small way to keep this resource open to anyone who needs it. Now, back to the log: one final tip. Maria told me she printed her decision log and brought it to her promotion interview. She didn't show it unless asked, but when the hiring manager asked for an example of a strategic decision, she flipped to the relevant entry. That physical document made her story more concrete. Luna: Tactical and powerful. I'm starting mine this week. Lucas, great episode. Lucas: Thanks, Luna. And to everyone listening: your decisions are your best evidence. Write them down.