What it corrects
A recommendation can look rigorous because one part is excellent. A detailed forecast can hide a bad frame. A clear objective can hide the absence of alternatives. Strong analysis can end without a person willing to act.
Decision Quality treats the recommendation as a chain of six links: an appropriate frame, clear values, creative alternatives, useful information, sound reasoning, and commitment to action. The chain is limited by its weakest consequential link. More polish on the strongest link does not repair the missing one.
decidenda’s five scoring dimensions compress the same logic for a decision memo. FRAME is the user-facing way to put the links on the page.
How it works
- Check the frame: decision-maker, choice, boundary, horizon, and objective.
- Make the values and trade-offs explicit rather than hiding them inside “best.”
- Add genuinely different alternatives before collecting more information.
- Separate relevant facts from assumptions and connect them with causal reasoning.
- Commit to an action, owner, test, or review loop.
- Improve the weakest link until it is strong enough for the stakes.
In a Business Case Weekly case
In the Booking case, a memo about acquiring supply may contain strong market data and still fail if it never defines whether the objective is inventory breadth, contribution margin, or customer trust. Changing the objective changes the alternatives, the useful information, and the decision.
In your answer
- “The objective is … while preserving …”
- “The strongest alternative is …; it wins if …”
- “I commit to … and will review it when …”
Common misuse
The six links are not six headings that guarantee a high score. They are a diagnostic. A sentence under every label can still be vague, unsupported, or internally inconsistent. Use the framework to find the bottleneck in the reasoning, then improve that bottleneck with case evidence. Do not award yourself quality for completeness alone.