Your LMS proves people read the policy. This shows whether they can use it.

See what a session actually discovers — three real sessions, three different findings: Inside a Decision Brief →

Choose the decision. Bring your policy. Practice the call before it’s real.

A Colleague’s Dilemma

AI Acceptable Use Policy

Runs on helpfulness, not carelessness — the shortcut produces genuinely better work.

Maya has the transcript from today’s strategy session — the unreleased roadmap, the pricing calls, three customers under negotiation — and five teammates who need a recap. The AI tool she already uses would turn it into a clean summary in a minute. It’s just an internal recap, so a public AI tool is fine. Right?

Your teams discover that the question was never the quality of the summary — it’s where the data goes. What it surfaces: whether people can name the approved tool and whether they know the line between convenient and permitted. What it prevents: confidential data leaving the company through the most helpful person on the team.

8:58 AM

Incident Reporting Policy

Runs on the deadline — and on a dashboard nobody meant as a threat.

At 8:37, an email inside a real vendor thread asked Tess to re-confirm banking details before Wednesday’s payment run. She clicked, signed in, and went back to month-end close. At 8:57, she hovered over the link: the domain is one letter off. Nothing looks wrong. Her account works. And she’s fairly sure reporting means losing her laptop — during close week.

Your team practices the decision almost nobody practices: the first five minutes after realizing you’ve been had. What it surfaces: whether anyone can name the reporting action in thirty seconds, and what people believe actually happens when they use it. What it improves: how fast security hears about the maybe — the only part of the incident anyone still controls.

Extra Fair

Conflicts of Interest Policy

Runs on reputation, not greed — disclosing feels like admitting you can’t be trusted.

Halfway through scoring three vendor proposals, your analyst recognizes a name on the second one — her brother-in-law is its sales director. Nobody else knows. She didn’t pick the bidders, she doesn’t report to anyone involved, and she’s certain she can be objective; if anything, she’ll grade them harder to prove it.

Your teams discover that a conflict is not an accusation — it’s a fact about the situation, and disclosing it is how objective people stay believable. The scoring was never the risk; the silence was. What it surfaces: whether anyone can name where a disclosure actually goes and what happens after. What it prevents: a clean decision that can never be proven clean.

Gate 34

Protecting Confidential Information Policy

Runs on normalcy, not carelessness — everyone works like this now.

Her flight is delayed, the deal call can’t move, and Gate 34 is packed. Deal name, customer name, the number that isn’t public yet — all of it at gate volume, spreadsheet open on screen. Twenty minutes in, the man one seat over closes his laptop, and she catches the logo on his badge: her customer’s biggest competitor.

Your teams discover the difference between working anywhere and saying anything anywhere — and what the right move is in the minute after you realize the audience was real. What it surfaces: whether “confidential” has practical rules for public spaces, or only a definition in a policy. What it prevents: the leak with no attacker, no breach, and nothing to blame but the gate area.

The Thank-You

Gifts & Entertainment Policy

Runs on gratitude, not influence — the project is over, so what could it possibly buy?

Two weeks after go-live, the implementation vendor sends your project manager a case of wine and a handwritten note: “Couldn’t have done it without you.” The selection is finished, the contract is signed, and the invoices are paid. Sending it back feels insulting. Keeping it feels harmless. The renewal discussion starts in five months.

Your teams discover that timing, not price, is what makes a gift complicated — and that “the deal is done” is rarely as done as it feels. What it surfaces: whether anyone knows the threshold, the register, and who to ask before the wine is already in the kitchen. What it improves: the odds that the renewal negotiation starts clean.

The Reply

Social Media & External Communications Policy

Runs on loyalty, not recklessness — somebody has to defend us.

A customer’s complaint about your company is going viral, and it is wrong — your engineer knows the technical claim is false, can prove it, and has a reply drafted in the next tab. Marketing hasn’t said a word in four hours. Every minute of silence reads as guilt.

Your teams discover the difference between being right and being authorized — and what the correct first move is when the company is being wronged in public. What it surfaces: whether people know who speaks for the company and where to send the correction they’re holding. What it prevents: the accurate reply that becomes the story.

The Upload

Data Privacy Policy

Runs on the deadline, not defiance — the vendor is approved, after all.

The new marketing platform is approved, paid for, and two weeks from launch — and its onboarding checklist asks for the full customer file, enriched: purchase history, support tickets, the works. The coordinator holding the export button has never met your privacy officer. The project is already behind.

Your teams discover where “approved vendor” ends and “approved data use” begins — from the seat that actually holds the button. What it surfaces: whether the people nearest the data know there is a threshold that triggers review, and who answers when it does.

Mirror session: the Leadership Edition version puts your executives in the same moment, one level up.

The Hot Mic

Respectful Workplace Policy

Runs on belonging, not malice — breaking the silence costs something real, and everyone in the room knows it.

The new account manager drops off the call — and someone’s mic stays live: a joke about her, two laughs, then silence. Six people heard it. Five are now looking at their screens, deciding to have heard nothing. Your employee is one of the five.

Your teams discover that the bystander’s next move is where a respectful-workplace policy becomes operational — the culture is set by what the five do next. What it surfaces: whether people know the routes that don’t require filing a formal complaint, and whether “not my business” is your policy’s biggest competitor.

The Handshake

Sales Practices / Contracting Policy

Runs on the quota — and on a customer everyone wants to keep.

The quarter’s biggest deal is ready to sign — if the customer’s VP hears one sentence first: “If the budget review goes badly in January, we’ll work something out.” Nothing in writing; he just wants to hear it. The rep’s manager has replied to the thread with five words: “We need this one in the quarter.”

Your teams discover why side promises cannot stay outside the approved contracting process — even when everyone intends to be reasonable. What it surfaces: whether side understandings have a route to Deal Desk before signature, and what your own quarter-end pressure is teaching people to improvise.

Mirror session: Booked, where leadership finds the promise after it is already in the numbers.

Under the Limit

Travel & Expense Policy

Runs on smallness — and on three weekends of overtime nobody paid for.

The client dinner ran to $212 against a $150 limit. At the end of a project that ate three weekends, nobody compensated. Splitting the receipt across two days isn’t even hard — the system practically invites it. It’s a twelve-dollar difference to the company, and a small piece of fairness to her.

Your teams discover how integrity systems actually fail — not through big thefts but through small corrections people feel entitled to make. What it surfaces: whether people treat the expense policy as a rule or an opening position, and where they would take a limit that seems genuinely wrong. What it prevents: the audit finding that starts at twelve dollars and ends as a trust problem.

The Cleanup

Records Retention & Legal Hold Policy

Runs on tidiness, not concealment — storage costs money, and the project is dead.

It’s archive week. The old project drive is forty gigabytes of drafts nobody has opened in two years, and IT’s banner is counting down. Halfway through the delete queue, your analyst half-remembers an email from Legal last spring — something about preserving documents for a dispute. This might be that project. Probably not. The banner is still up.

Your teams discover that deletion is a decision, not housekeeping — and that “probably not” is exactly the moment to stop. What it surfaces: whether legal holds are findable by the people they bind, and whether employees know who can answer the ” is this covered” question before anything is deleted. What it prevents: an ordinary Tuesday of cleanup from becoming the worst fact in someone else’s case.

The Text

Securities Trading Policy

Runs on affection, not ambition — protecting family feels like the decent thing to do.

An employee on the IPO workstream gets a text from his brother-in-law: “Finally opened a brokerage account. Day one, I’m in. Proud of you, man.” He knows something the market doesn’t. Warning him off feels like decency — but a warning from inside the company can itself carry the very information the policy exists to protect.

Your teams discover that tips travel in both directions: from inside a company, “wait” is advice someone can trade on, no numbers required. What it surfaces: whether anyone can name the contact for information-and-trading questions in thirty seconds, and whether an approved outside reply exists at all.

Mirror session: The Win puts your leadership team inside the same window, one level up.

What we need from you

Three things, and you already have all of them: the policy, the reporting route it points to, and one sentence about the situation where your people get it wrong. Often, that last part is a real thing that already happened somewhere in your industry.

You review the draft, we revise, you sign off. Nothing reaches a room without your approval.

Looking for the Leadership Edition?

Employee Decision Briefs ask: “What am I supposed to do?” The Xcelus Decision Brief™ — Leadership Edition asks the question behind it: “Did we build an organization where that employee knows what to do?” Sixty minutes, facilitated, for the leadership tables that own the answer.

Three of these scenarios exist at both levels — The Text and The Win, The Upload and its Leadership Edition, The Handshake and Booked — the same organizational risk, viewed from two decision levels.