---
title: "When a decision goes to a person"
description: "What always reaches a person, how it reaches them, and what happens if nobody answers."
url: "https://docs.octo.ad/decision-ladder/when-a-person-decides/"
id: "decision-ladder/when-a-person-decides"
type: "concept"
audience: "team lead"
dateModified: "2026-11-06"
productArea: "the decision ladder"
ladderRung: "person"
keywords: ["human approval", "the Desk"]
---

# When a decision goes to a person

> What always reaches a person, how it reaches them, and what happens if nobody answers.

## What always needs a person

Anything consequential or irreversible: actions that leave the organization, such as outbound messages or payments, and higher-stakes decisions, which ask for a more deliberate confirmation. You decide where the line sits, lane by lane.

## Who sees the card

The decision owner you name. Decisions that matter arrive on the Desk, one card each, with the question and a recommendation first, options side by side and evidence attached; a card missing context is refused before it reaches the owner. If nobody answers, nothing irreversible happens: anything that leaves the organization, such as a message to a customer or a payment, waits for the owner's deliberate confirmation. Scheduled briefings list what is waiting on the owner. Every decision is recorded with who made it, when and what they chose.

## Messages and money

Only with a person's deliberate confirmation. Anything that leaves the organization, such as a message to someone outside or a payment, is treated as irreversible: it waits for a deliberate confirm before it fires, and the weightier the call, the more deliberate the confirm. Which outbound connectors a tenant has is not published; ask the team.