Who decides, who is consulted, who is informed — written down, tested against the last ten decisions.
In the latency data, 71% of measured decision delay is caused not by missing information but by missing authority — decisions that have no single owner and therefore route through everyone. Most organisations have a RACI somewhere. Almost none has one that survives contact with its own last ten decisions.
The ledger is a governance document with a test built in. Every recurring decision class gets one accountable owner, a consulted list kept deliberately short, and a forum where the decision happens. Then the ledger is audited against the last ten significant decisions actually made: where reality diverged from the page, either the page or the behaviour is corrected — in writing.
Decision classes inventoried from minutes and approval trails — the decisions the organisation actually makes, not the ones the org chart implies.
Week 1The draft ledger is tested against the last ten significant decisions: who really decided, who was really consulted, how long it really took. Divergences are logged.
Week 2The reconciled ledger is signed and wired into the operating cadence: each decision class assigned to its forum, each with a named owner. Re-audited quarterly.
Week 3–4The ten-decision test is the point of the instrument. A ledger that has not been tested against actual decisions is an aspiration, not a governance document.
Organisations where decision latency is measured and material — the ledger removes the authority gaps the measurement exposes.
Post-acquisition seams, where two authority structures must become one before integration decisions queue.
Hospital networks, professional firms and other consensus cultures, where consultation has quietly replaced decision.
Applied in more than twenty engagements since 2024, most sharply where consensus cultures had priced consultation into every decision:
The Institute stewards the ledger format and revises it after every tenth application review. Changes are versioned; superseded editions remain citable.
Cite as: Markham Institute, “Decision Rights Ledger”, MKM-F-008, v1.1 (2026).