Not every stalled decision is a missing document. Sometimes the document would be a lie: a closed list you do not have, a fact two people will not grant, a relationship that will not survive another letter. In those cases a briefing is not rigor. It is an attempt to win in writing a thing that can only be settled in the room.
Call, email, or briefing is a choice, not a ladder. The meeting is still right when writing has a structural problem, not a formatting one.
The list is still being discovered
A decision request needs a closed set. If you cannot name the options without hearing them talk, you do not have a briefing yet. You have a topic. Forcing A/B/C onto the page will get you a pick among fantasies, and a week later the real option D will show up in a hallway.
A call — or a short working session — is how D appears. Take notes. Then write the briefing for anyone who was not there, including yourselves tomorrow.
The facts are contested in a way paper will not settle
If they believe legal signed and you believe it did not, a labelled assumption helps. If they believe you are acting in bad faith, a label will be read as a lawyer's trick. Some disagreements are about the world. Some are about whether the other person is dealing straight. The second kind does not close in a package.
You still should not skip the human in the loop on whatever you do send afterward. The meeting is for the contested part. The briefing is for the record of what you then agreed.
People need to watch each other update
A cofounder changing their mind in real time, a client hearing their own constraint said back, a board member who will only say no with their face — those are meeting jobs. A written no can be too expensive. A spoken one, in the room, is sometimes the only one you will get.
Do not use that as a reason to skip writing after. The room is lossy. The absentee still needs a page. The future argument still needs who said what.
How to keep the meeting honest
Send a page first: current options, current guesses, the question you want the hour to close. If they read it, the call starts on the work. If they do not, you learn that before you spend six calendars.
End with an owner and a sentence. Then send that sentence as a briefing, approved, labelled. The meeting was the instrument. The package is what remains.
A meeting booked to avoid finishing a question is still a waste. A meeting booked because the question cannot exist yet is the work. Tell those apart and you will write more, and you will also stop pretending a document can do a human job it cannot.