Self-managing organisations have a vocabulary problem. The same word means different things to a sociocracy practitioner, a project manager and an auditor, and most of the confusion in a transformation programme is people agreeing loudly about terms they define differently.
This governance glossary defines the vocabulary Autono uses, in the sense in which we use it. Where a term is contested, we say so.
Decision log
A structured, chronological record of the significant decisions an organisation has made, capturing what was decided, who decided it, when, and on what reasoning. Unlike meeting minutes, which record what was discussed, a decision log records only what was settled and why. It is organisation-wide and continuous rather than scoped to a project.
The distinguishing feature of a working decision log is that it captures reasoning alongside outcome, so that a reader who was not present can judge whether the decision still applies. See what a decision log is and why most teams abandon theirs.
Decision register
A project-scoped list of decisions maintained by whoever is accountable for a project or programme, opened when the project opens and closed when it closes. It usually sits alongside a risk register and an issue log and originates in project management practice.
A register is not a substitute for a decision log. It answers questions about the conduct of one piece of work, and it is archived when that work ends. Decisions that outlive the project have no place in it. See decision log, decision register or meeting minutes.
Decision record
A single entry in a decision log. A complete decision record contains the decision stated as one declarative sentence, the reasoning including alternatives considered and the assumption relied on, the person who decided and the authority under which they decided, and the trigger that should bring it back for another look.
The term is also used in software engineering as shorthand for an architecture decision record, which follows the same structure for technical choices.
Decision audit trail
A contemporaneous, attributable record of how significant decisions were reached, sufficient for someone who was not present to verify that a decision was made by an authorised party, on stated reasoning, at a known point in time.
The difference from a decision log is emphasis rather than content. A log exists to be useful internally; an audit trail exists to be defensible externally, to a board, a membership, an auditor or a regulator. Contemporaneity is the requirement that most often fails, because records reconstructed after the fact are indistinguishable from real ones unless the system timestamps its own entries. See how to build a decision audit trail.
Trigger
The named condition that should bring a recorded decision back for reconsideration. Usually an event or a threshold rather than a date: a headcount reached, a contract renewed, a metric crossing a stated level.
Recording a trigger converts a decision that felt permanent into one that is honestly provisional, and gives colleagues explicit permission to reopen it without that reading as a challenge to whoever decided.
Decision rights
The explicit allocation of authority over specific categories of decision to specific roles, teams or individuals, setting out what each may decide alone, what requires consultation, and what must be escalated.
Decision rights describe authority rather than responsibility: not who does the work, but whose judgment settles the question. Organisations that distribute authority need decision rights defined more precisely than hierarchical ones do, because they no longer inherit them from position. See decision rights: how to decide who decides.
Decision velocity
The rate at which an organisation converts a question into a settled, actioned decision. Measured as the elapsed time from a decision being raised to it being both resolved and communicated, usually reported as a median across a defined class of decisions.
Distinct from decision quality and frequently in tension with it. Decision velocity is a useful indicator of organisational drag because, unlike engagement or satisfaction measures, it is observable from the record rather than reported by the people being measured.
Decision latency
The delay between a decision becoming necessary and it being made. Where decision velocity measures throughput across many decisions, latency describes the waiting on a single one.
Latency is where most of the cost of poor governance accumulates, because the work downstream of an unmade decision is either paused or proceeding on a guess.
Decision infrastructure
The systems, records and processes through which an organisation makes, records and retrieves decisions. Distinct from project management software, which tracks work, and from knowledge management software, which stores documents.
The term describes a category that has historically had no dedicated tooling. Most organisations assemble decision infrastructure informally from chat, documents and meetings, which produces activity without a record. See Autono's Log module.
Advice process
A decision-making method in which the person closest to a question decides it, having first sought input from those affected and those with relevant expertise. Seeking the advice is mandatory; following it is not.
Popularised by Frédéric Laloux in Reinventing Organizations and practised at Buurtzorg, Morning Star and others. Frequently mistaken for consensus, which it is not: the decision remains with a single holder throughout.
Consent decision making
A method in which a proposal proceeds unless someone raises a reasoned objection demonstrating that it would cause harm or prevent the group from meeting its aims. Objections must be resolved rather than outvoted.
Central to sociocracy and to Holacracy's governance process. Consent is not consensus. Consensus asks whether everyone agrees; consent asks whether anyone has a substantive reason to object, which is a lower and far more achievable bar.
Integrative decision making
Holacracy's structured process for governance decisions, in which a proposal is presented, clarifying questions are taken, reactions are heard, the proposer may amend, and objections are tested against defined criteria before being integrated.
The process is deliberately restrictive about what counts as a valid objection, which is what allows it to reach outcomes quickly. It is also the aspect practitioners most often find rigid.
Asynchronous session
A structured decision-making process conducted without a synchronous meeting, in which a proposal, its supporting context, questions, objections and the resulting decision are all handled over a defined window rather than in real time.
Distinct from asynchronous communication generally. The defining feature is that a session has a decision as its output and a defined close, which is what separates it from an open-ended discussion thread. See Autono's sessions module.
Governance operating system
Software that provides the structures through which an organisation distributes authority, makes decisions and maintains accountability, as opposed to software that manages tasks, documents or communication.
An emerging category. The term is used variously by vendors; Autono uses it to mean a system covering decision-making, the decision record, roles and mandates, and organisational knowledge as a connected whole.
OrganisationalOS
Autono's term for a single connected platform covering membership, communication, decision-making, the decision record and organisational knowledge, designed for organisations where authority is distributed to the teams closest to the work.
The distinction from a collaboration suite is that an OrganisationalOS is organised around decisions and roles rather than around messages and documents.
Organisational Ikigai
The intersection of what an organisation is good at, what it cares about, what the world needs from it, and what it can sustain itself on. Adapted from the Japanese concept of individual purpose.
Autono uses the term to describe the alignment work that distinguishes purposeful organisations from merely efficient ones. It is the reason the platform treats purpose as structural rather than decorative.
A note on contested terms
Several terms in this governance glossary are used differently elsewhere, and it is worth knowing where the disagreements sit.
Self-management, self-organisation and self-direction are used interchangeably by most writers and distinguished carefully by a few. Teal is a stage description from Laloux's developmental model, not a governance method, though it is frequently used as though it were one. Holacracy is a specific, trademarked practice with a written constitution, while sociocracy is a broader family of methods, so the two are not alternatives in quite the way comparison articles usually suggest.
Where our usage differs from a source you are working with, the source's definition should generally win inside your own organisation. The point of a governance glossary is shared meaning, not correct meaning.
If you are building an organisation that distributes authority and want the vocabulary and the infrastructure to match, Get started with Autono.
