Latest / Executive Careers with Fexingo: VP, C-Suite, and Senior Leadership Career Strategy / How Executives Use a Decision Journal to Lead Better
Transcript
- Lucas: There's a quiet habit that separates the executives who keep getting better from the ones who plateau, and it's not more hours, more models, or more advisors. It's the decision journal. Luna: A decision journal. I've heard of it, but it always felt a little too introspective for me. You mean literally writing down every big call? Lucas: Not every call. The ones that matter. I first got interested when I heard about a hospital system CEO who ran a multi-site operation across three states. She kept a decision journal for seven years, and she told me it caught something her intuition had missed. Luna: What did it catch? Lucas: She had a pattern of overconfidence in expansion bets. Every time she approved a new clinic or a new service line, she wrote down her reasoning, the assumptions she was making, and the indicators she'd watch. And after two or three years, she noticed that when she was most excited about a deal, she was systematically underestimating the ramp-up time. Her journal made that visible. Luna: That's a powerful self-diagnosis. But how do you actually get started without it feeling like another admin task? Lucas: The format is simpler than people expect. Three columns. One, what's the decision. Two, what's the reasoning — the actual 'why' behind the choice. Three, what would tell you you're wrong. That third column is the one most people skip, and it's the one that turns a journal into a learning instrument. Luna: So you're not just recording the outcome. You're forcing yourself to define your own failure criteria upfront. That's clever. Lucas: Exactly. And the review cadence matters too. She reviewed her journal every quarter, not after every decision. That gave her enough distance to see patterns instead of just remembering the last win or loss. Luna: I can imagine a lot of executives resist this because they'd rather keep moving forward than look back. It feels like rumination. Lucas: There's a difference between rumination and structured reflection. Rumination is replaying the same loop without new information. A decision journal creates new information, because you're comparing what you actually thought at the time against what you remember thinking. Luna: That's a subtle but crucial point. Memory is a terrible record of our own reasoning. We rewrite the past to make ourselves look consistent. Lucas: Right. And that's why the journal has to be written at the moment of the decision, not reconstructed later. If you fill it in a week after the fact, you've already started to sanitize it. The whole value is capturing your genuine uncertainty before you know how it turns out. Luna: So you're saying the act of writing forces you to confront the parts of your thinking you'd rather not admit, like 'I'm choosing this because it feels good' or 'I'm ignoring the red flags because I want this to work.' Lucas: That's exactly what the hospital CEO found. She started noticing that when she wrote her reasoning, she'd sometimes catch herself using vague language — 'we should be able to' or 'the market seems ready.' And that vagueness was a warning sign. Her journal became a kind of early warning system for sloppy thinking. Luna: But I imagine there's also a risk of becoming too cautious, like you document every doubt and then you can't make a call. Lucas: That's a real concern, and the journal isn't about paralysis. It's about making the doubt explicit so you can weigh it properly. The CEO told me she didn't change her decisions because of the journal. She changed the way she planned for them. She started building in longer ramp-up times and more checkpoints. The decisions themselves might have been the same, but her execution got better. Luna: That's a really practical outcome. You're not second-guessing yourself into inaction, you're just making better contingency plans. Lucas: And there's a second layer that I find even more interesting. The journal isn't just for learning. It's also a way to build trust with your team. When you share your decision log with your direct reports, you're modeling a culture of intellectual honesty. It sends a message that it's okay to be uncertain, as long as you're being rigorous about it. Luna: I love that. It's like leading by example without having to say a word. But what about the practical side? Do you recommend a specific tool or just a notebook? Lucas: Honestly, the medium doesn't matter. I've seen executives use a leather notebook, a spreadsheet, even a private blog. What matters is consistency and honesty. You need a format that's easy enough to maintain that you'll actually do it, and private enough that you'll be brutally honest. Luna: And if you're an executive listening, you might be thinking, 'I don't have time to write in a journal after every big decision.' But let's be honest, you probably spend more time in a week on email than you would on this. Lucas: It's a fifteen-minute investment for a decision that could shape a quarter or a year. That's a pretty good return on time. Luna: You know, this reminds me of something that we often talk about on this show: the value of slowing down to speed up. And it's true for the show itself, too. We get notes from listeners who say that a single episode has helped them reframe a career challenge or prepare for a difficult conversation. Lucas: And that's exactly why we do this. If the show has helped you think through a move or a decision, and you'd like to keep it going, you can support us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a simple way to keep the podcast ad-free and independent. No pressure, but it makes a real difference. Luna: Yeah, it's a small gesture that goes a long way, and we appreciate every bit of it. But back to the journal — what's a common mistake people make when they start? Lucas: The biggest one is waiting for a 'big' decision. People think, 'I'll start when I have to approve a merger or restructure a division.' But by then the stakes are high and the pressure is on, and you're not going to start a new habit in the middle of a crisis. You want to build the muscle on smaller decisions first. Luna: So start with a hire, a budget reallocation, a vendor selection. Something with a clear outcome but not existential. Lucas: Exactly. And you also want to be disciplined about the review. If you never go back and read your old entries, it's just a diary. The learning comes from comparing your predicted outcomes with what actually happened. Luna: And when you do that review, do you focus on the decisions that went wrong, or the ones that went right? Lucas: Both, but for different reasons. The wrong ones teach you about your blind spots. The right ones can teach you about your strengths — if you're honest about whether the outcome was due to skill or luck. That's where the third column really pays off. If everything went well but you predicted a fifty percent chance of success, you should be asking why you were so pessimistic. Luna: That's a really nuanced point. It's not about self-congratulation or self-flagellation; it's about calibrating your judgment over time. Lucas: Precisely. And over a few years, you start to see patterns that you could never catch in the moment. The hospital CEO, for example, eventually realized that her best decisions were the ones where she had a clear 'wrong' indicator. When she couldn't define what would tell her she was off track, that was a red flag in itself. Luna: So it's almost like a forcing function for clarity. If you can't articulate what would prove you wrong, you probably don't understand the decision well enough. Lucas: That's a great way to put it. And it's a habit that pays off not just in business but in your career more broadly. The same CEO told me she used her journal to decide when to step down. She reviewed five years of entries before she made that call, and she said it gave her confidence that she wasn't just reacting to a bad quarter. Luna: Wow. So it's a tool for major life decisions too, not just quarterly business calls. Lucas: Absolutely. And that's why I think it's one of the most underutilized leadership tools out there. It costs nothing, takes fifteen minutes, and has the potential to compound into much better judgment over a career. Luna: I'm actually tempted to start one myself. Maybe I'll begin with my next big career decision. Lucas: And if you do, let us know how it goes. But for now, the takeaway is simple: start small, be honest, review regularly, and let your past self teach your present self.