Question the question

It was Einstein who famously said:

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

And something I'm learning the longer I go through my career is that this is probably the most fundamental behaviour I wish I had stuck to when I was younger.

Coincidentally, I shared these thoughts with Will only yesterday.

Understanding the question is something I bang on and bang on about pretty much every day in my role now.

As annoying as it is for some, before we kick off any work, I can be heard repeating (some would say demanding) "Are we all clear on the question we are answering???"

This isn't a new problem, as Albert's famous quote proves, yet I do believe it's becoming more and more important. As clients are demanding quicker turnarounds on their briefs, and agencies are becoming more and more obsessed with responding with pace instead of accuracy and more and more obsessed about locking in the revenue, there is a dangerous appetite for people to run around quickly solving problems... before they actually know what the problem is. Sometimes exacerbated by account teams wanting to please clients or to lock in income. But if you start running to an answer before you know the question, you'll regret it one way or the other...

Here are a few things worth thinking about to help you understand the question you're answering before you answer it.

Get sign-off on the question you're answering

A lot of the time these days, clients don't feel it's necessary to supply written briefs. That can be for a multitude of reasons: lack of time/ a perception of understanding between all parties/ lack of client capability/ client doesn't want to make critical decisions that a brief template forces them to make.

You have a couple of options when this happens - you force the client to write one, or you play one back to them. The former can become a battle of wills, and eventually a war of attrition, so I prefer the latter. I prefer sending the client 1 slide, with 1 sentence on it of the brief I think they want us to answer. Now this isn't a replay of what they've said to us, it's the brief we think they actually want us to answer.

Starting the statement with 'how' is a simple tip, because the client might give you a problem when we need to start framing it as something to attack.

An example. The client might share this problem with us: "Product A's sale are slowing, help me increase sales quickly."

Yet we should go back with something like: "How can we increase the sales of Product A, bearing in mind [reality check A, B and C], to achieve [Objective A]?"

You'll see we've added reality checks in there - because clients sometimes (willfully) ignore the bad news. Well, unfortunately for them it's our job to reflect reality and tell them things they may not want to hear.

And we've hardwired objectives into the brief. Ideally a Business Objective, and ideally only one!

So we've already made decisions on their behalf, shared some factors they need to be aware of and agreed on what the eventual success criteria is - the objective.

Or, Hypothesise a little more on the answer in the question

Another way of doing this, if you're feeling confident is to hypothesise on the answer in the question a little more. And remember, we do not work in an arena where there is one correct answer. There are many correct answers...

For example, the question we've agreed with the client could be: "How can we increase the sales of Product A, bearing in mind [reality check A, B and C], to achieve [Objective A]?" yet the one-pager I could go back with (with knowledge of the category, client and product) could be something like: "To increase sales, should we attack Competitor X by picking a fight in public and making it a participative war, and thus increase Objective A?"

I might play back 2 or 3 of these one-sliders that take the question from different angles, to understand the client appetite and test a few different hypotheses. The reality is they'll all have different Pros and Cons - be honest about this.

In this more advanced re-articulation of the brief it's key you make some decisions though, and my tendency is to be provocative and punchy - we're not here to maintain the status quo.

But, take a step back beyond comms

One of the biggest differences we can make to a client's objectives here is to think beyond communications.

If you read the statement above about picking a fight, and your mind jumped straight to an advertising campaign, then you need to take a step back.

There are many ways to pick a fight, many ways to do it in public, and many ways to ultimately increase sales. What about pricing strategy? Distribution? Packaging?

Any agency worth its salt, and any Planner worth her salt should at this point be looking at all of the ways, in a truly objective manner, to achieve the brief. Don't silo yourself or your agency. If your MD tells you to only focus on comms because that's your business model, then I'd think about joining another agency...

Be clear as an agency

I've picked up loads of little lessons as I've moved through my career, and one that has stuck with me for years is "don't presume anything" and it's very very true.

Different people are programmed in different ways, respond to different scenarios in different ways, and have different trigger words and different goals.

So when you're in your internal meeting, thinking you all have clarity as Planners, Consultants, Creatives and Account Handlers, as to what the question is... you probably don't. Don't presume you all have the same vision in your head.

If you take the example statement above, lots of it is subjective:

• Attack: Directly? Indirectly? With what evidence?
• Picking a fight: How? Emotionally? Functionally?
• In public: Where?
• Participative: Do we use the general population or brand advocates?

So you have to be 100% clear internally on every element you've shared with the client, otherwise it'll become a problem later. And it often does...

Understand that the brief may not be the real question to answer

Finally, you can forget all of the above if you don't understand the context in which your client is operating.

The art of account handling is being lost in my opinion, and the best account handlers I've ever worked with are part strategist, part client counsellor. They would know not only their client's business objectives (that help them hit their bonus) but also their hidden agenda (that might help them get their promotion or that move to a better role elsewhere). And it works vice-versa too, with the best Planners and Strategists understanding the real client context with the objectivity they (should) bring to the table.

We also need to think of this when we look at the overall situation: Why this question? Why now? Who is the main decision maker and who is to be consulted? How will the client share this work internally, with who? Why this timescale? What keeps them awake at night? How will this brief help them achieve their goals?

Sometimes if you spend time understanding this then everything else falls into place...

So, in summary, spend more time interrogating the question. If you're an agency leader, you should mandate the above actions immediately - it'll save you a lot of time, a lot of money, and it'll probably reduce your churn rate too as less of your team will be frustrated with the clients of process...