Axion Decision Placement Framework

Organisations with comprehensive procedures, standards and delegation instruments often lack a decision authority structure: for each class of decision, who owns it, at what threshold, on what evidence, and what happens if no decision is made in time. Routine decisions then become coordination events and escalation occurs by ambiguity, not by rule. This note sets out a framework for completing an organisation's decision grammar. It defines a decision as distinct from rule execution, then specifies six grammar elements, a placement rule (local by default, transferred by rule), a five-step placement ladder that yields either an owner or a named gap type, three judgement classes, three authority levels defined by trigger conditions, and four guardrails that make distributed authority credible to executives, auditors and regulators. Its core proposition is that good decision architecture removes rule-determined choices from the decision load, places bounded judgement with the closest legitimate authority, and transfers only where the consequence class exceeds that authority. It is an applied instrument of the regulatory grammar axis of the Axion framework.