Why did we decide this?
Reconstructing it afterwards takes days and produces a tidied-up version.
AtlasShared decision file
Facts, decisions, versions and access
The decision is made. In six months, nobody will remember what it rested on.
- Shared file
- Rights & versions
- Shared objects
- Decision register
The files sit on three shared drives, the final version is called v7-final-OK, the decisive analysis is in the mailbox of someone who has moved on, and the figure everyone quotes no longer has an identifiable source.
This is not a filing problem. It is what stops you answering when an investor, a partner or a new director asks why you chose this — and what makes it impossible to know whether the choice still holds.
LEADERSHIP QUESTION
What evidence are we deciding on?
WHAT ATLAS LETS YOU HOLD ON TO
Five questions that always come too late.
Who said what, and on what basis?
A judgement with no author and no date cannot be discussed: it can only be endured.
Are we talking about the same segment?
The “North region” in a sales file and the one in a finance file do not always cover the same perimeter. The analyses diverge and nobody understands why.
Who is allowed to see what?
A file opened to an investor, a partner or an outside consultant does not expose everything.
When should this file be reopened?
Without a written condition and a named owner, no decision is ever re-examined: it is only abandoned or endured.
WORKING LOOP
Frame, attach, decide, keep, reopen.
Keeping versions is what separates a file from a document store. You are not only looking for the current state: you are looking for what changed, when, and because of what.
- 01Create the file: question, perimeter, horizon, owners
- 02Attach the facts with their source, date and author
- 03Define access: who reads, who contributes, who decides
- 04Work in the relevant workspaces
- 05Record the decision, its assumptions and its fallback
- 06Keep the versions and what made them change
- 07Reopen on signal
ANATOMY OF THE FILE
A single object, fed by seven workspaces.
The stable identity of objects is not a technical detail: it is what ensures that two analyses of “the industrial segment” are actually talking about the same perimeter.
- The question — what is being decided, over what horizon, in front of whom
- The owners — who investigates, who contributes, who decides
- The facts — each with its source, date and author
- The shared objects — markets, segments, products, under a stable identity
- The analyses — produced in the workspaces, attached to the same file
- The decisions — the choice, its assumptions, its fallback, the evidence expected
- The versions — the state of the file at each stage
- The access rights — defined at file level, not tool level
- The reopening conditions — signal, threshold, owner
CONCRETE EXAMPLE
“Why did you go from 25% to 15%?”
An investor compares this year’s plan with last year’s and notices that the growth assumption has been cut. Without a file, the answer is a reconstruction from memory, and it sounds like one.
With the file, the answer takes a minute: the assumption was revised on a given date, by a named person, after a listing was lost at a distributor — a dated, sourced fact — and the fallback written into the previous decision note was triggered exactly as written.
The revision stops being an admission of weakness and becomes proof that steering works.
Illustrative case.
ATLAS AND THE OTHER WORKSPACES
Everything starts from the file and returns to it.
The file opened in Atlas feeds Grid to compare options, Plot to put the differences in perspective, Mix to quantify price, volume and margin, Calc to make the calculations auditable, Map to locate dependencies, and Pilot to project the trajectory.
Each workspace works on the same objects, under the same identity, within the same perimeter. Nothing is copied over: that is what prevents the version shown to the board from differing from the one the teams worked on.
HOW TO GET IT
Atlas is not sold on its own, and that is by design.
Self-service
Annual licence
Atlas is included in every licence: it is the base the other workspaces work on.
Scoped engagement
Fixed fee
The engagement fills the file and leaves it with you. That is the difference between leaving with a loaded tool and leaving with a document.
Guided review
Subscription
The file is what we reopen at each review, and what makes the review quick.
Nobody buys an empty file. Atlas arrives with the first decision worked through, and becomes the place where it is kept.
See the three access modes in detailWHO PRODUCES WHAT
Atlas keeps your decisions. They belong to you, and remain exportable.
| Deliverable | Produced by |
|---|---|
| File structure and versions | The tool |
| Stable identity of shared objects | The tool |
| Access rights per file | The tool, configured with you |
| Facts, sources and dates | Your teams, structured in Atlas |
| Wording of the question and the perimeter | Workshop run by inNOVAtio |
| Reopening conditions | Workshop, settled with you |
| The recorded decision | Your decision, recorded in the file |
The last line cannot be delegated: it is the only one that commits your responsibility.
WHAT ATLAS IS NOT
It will not go looking for what you do not attach to it.
Atlas gathers what the team records or explicitly attaches to it. It is not an engine that sweeps your shared drives, and a neglected file stays an empty file.
It is neither a document management system, nor an intranet, nor a CRM. Those tools keep files or contacts; Atlas keeps a line of reasoning — the question, the facts that inform it, the choice and its condition for revision.
Traceability does not make the decision right. It makes it explainable, contestable and revisable. That is different, and it is what you can promise a third party.
Atlas does not make the decision right. It makes it explainable, contestable and revisable.
Could you explain today the decision you made a year ago?
A first thirty-minute conversation about a decision you have already made, and what remains of it.