Three Questions Before You Brief Anyone

The brief goes out. The wheels start turning. Forty-eight hours later, someone asks a question that should have been asked before any of that happened.

Three questions that take ten minutes and redirect the project before it has gone in the wrong direction. Not about the audience segment or the KPIs. About the brief itself. What is it assuming? What has it not said? What would make the work harder to argue for than it needs to be?

These are not trick questions. They are the ones that feel slightly awkward to raise in the meeting and considerably more awkward to raise on a Tuesday when the first round of work is already back.

Finding something at this stage is not a problem. It is the questions working.

That is where you put the cushion: before the work goes out, not after it comes back.