Rolebase

Decisions

Record formal decisions and governance changes within your roles.

Overview

Decisions in Rolebase serve as the official record of agreements, governance changes, and formal resolutions made within a role. They provide an auditable history of how your organization’s structure and policies have evolved over time.

Why Record Decisions?

In self-governed organizations, decisions are not made by a single authority. They emerge from governance meetings, consent rounds, and discussions. Recording them ensures:

  • Transparency ensures everyone can see what was decided and when.
  • Accountability means decisions are linked to the role that made them.
  • Historical reference allows new members to review past decisions to understand context.
  • Governance integrity ensures formal changes to roles, domains, and policies are documented.

Creating a Decision

  1. Navigate to a role’s decisions section.
  2. Click New Decision.
  3. Enter a title that summarizes the decision.
  4. Add a description with the full context, including what was decided, why, and any relevant details.
Lamp On Be Specific

Good decision records include the context (why), the resolution (what), and any scope or time limits. This makes them valuable for future reference.

Decision Properties

PropertyDescription
TitleA concise summary of the decision
DescriptionFull details including context, rationale, and scope (supports rich text)
RoleThe role in which the decision was made
DateWhen the decision was recorded

Private Decisions

Decisions can be marked as private. Private decisions are only visible to members of the role in which they were made. This is appropriate for sensitive governance changes, personnel decisions, or confidential matters.

Decisions and Governance

In Holacracy and related frameworks, governance decisions typically involve changes to:

  • Role structure involves creating, modifying, or removing roles and sub-roles.
  • Role definitions covers changing a role’s purpose, domain, or accountabilities.
  • Policies are rules that govern how authority within a domain is exercised.

Recording these changes as decisions in Rolebase creates a governance log that complements the live organizational structure.

Info Circle Governance Protection

When Protect Governance is enabled in organization settings, structural changes can only be made by role leaders. Decisions serve as the record of approved governance changes.

Decisions in the News Feed

When a decision is created, it appears in the news feed for all organization members (unless the decision is private). This ensures that important resolutions are visible across the organization without requiring everyone to check each role individually.

Next Steps