You’ve heard of “garbage in, garbage out.” It applies to AI, to data pipelines, and to every consulting engagement I have ever seen go sideways.

Brief badly. Get bad work. It is that simple.

I know this from every angle. I have been the agency account manager trying to decode a three-line brief from a brand that expected magic.

I have been the brand-side marketing director handing over exactly that kind of brief, convinced it was fine.

I have been the consultant brought in to salvage a project where nobody could quite remember what the original brief said.

And I have spent years trying to bridge the gap between supplier and client, watching both sides frustrate each other in completely avoidable ways.

The problem is almost never the talent. It is almost always the brief.

Specifically: whether the client wrote it for a supplier, or for a partner. This post is about the second kind.

What a brief is actually for

Most people think a brief is a document that describes what they want. It is not. A brief is an act of thinking out loud. The process of writing it forces you to:

• clarify what you actually need,
• what you already know,
• and where your own uncertainty sits.

A brief that does that well is worth more than any subsequent meeting.

The external partner reads a brief and forms a picture. Not just of the project, but of the organization. Of the leadership team. Of how decisions get made. Of what has already been tried and quietly abandoned. A thin brief produces a thin picture. And a partner working from a thin picture will spend the first four weeks building the context they should have walked in with.

That is four weeks of your budget used for orientation instead of output.

A brief is not a document that describes what you want.

It is an act of thinking out loud.

The clearer the thinking, the faster the work.

The gap between the stated problem and the real one

The most consistent pattern I see: the stated problem and the real problem are not the same thing.

A company says: we need a new marketing strategy. What they mean is: the last three initiatives failed and we don’t understand why, we are under pressure from the board, the team is exhausted, and we need someone to help us see clearly again.

A company says: we need support with our digital transformation. What they mean is: we bought a platform eighteen months ago, adoption is at eleven percent, the internal champion has left, and we need someone to salvage this without making leadership look bad.

Neither version is dishonest. Both versions are incomplete. And a consultant working from the incomplete version will optimise for the wrong thing.

I have been on the receiving end of both. As an agency, you learn to read between the lines, often incorrectly. As a brand, you sometimes don’t even know what the real problem is until someone from outside names it.

The best briefs I have ever received were the ones where the client had done that naming themselves before I arrived. Those engagements moved at a completely different pace.

What to include that most people leave out

There are four things that almost never appear in a brief but consistently determine whether an engagement succeeds.

The internal politics. Who is behind this project, and who is not. Where the resistance sits, and why. Which stakeholder needs to be brought along carefully, and which one has already made up their mind. This is not gossip. It is navigation data. Without it, the external partner walks into rooms without a map.

The real deadline. Not the official one. The one behind the official one. The board presentation. The budget cycle. The moment when someone senior runs out of patience. External partners can work to a deadline they understand. They cannot protect a deadline they don’t know exists.

What has already been tried. Every organisation that hires external support has usually attempted something internally first. Knowing what was tried, and why it didn’t stick, is some of the most valuable context a consultant can have. It saves weeks of re-covering ground. It also prevents the embarrassment of proposing exactly what was already rejected six months ago.

Who actually has to say yes. Not who commissioned the project. Who has the authority to block it, delay it, or quietly de-prioritise it once the external partner is on board. In my work at Linelia, the most productive first conversation I can have with a new client is the one where they draw the actual decision map, not the org chart, but the map of who influences what.

The real deadline, the internal politics, what has already been tried, who actually has to say yes.

Leave any of these out and the engagement starts with a disadvantage it may never recover from.

On working at eye level

Here is what I learned from sitting on both sides: the dynamic in a briefing room reveals everything about how the engagement will go.

When I was agency-side, I could feel within twenty minutes whether a client saw us as a thinking partner or a production house. The brief was the first signal. A brief written with care, with context, with honest acknowledgment of what the client didn’t know, that brief said: we respect your expertise. Let’s figure this out together.

A brief that was vague, rushed, or basically a rephrased internal memo said something different. It said: deliver the thing and don’t ask too many questions.

Eye level does not mean equal authority. The client makes the decisions. That is how it should be.

Eye level means equal respect.

It means the external partner is hired to think, not just to execute. It means their honest assessment is more valuable than their agreement.

The best consulting relationships I have been part of shared one thing: the client treated the engagement as a collaboration, not a transaction. They shared the uncomfortable context. They pushed back when something didn’t feel right. They expected honest challenge in return, and they created space for it.

That starts with the brief. Before a single meeting. Before a proposal. The brief is the first signal of what kind of client you are going to be.

If your consultant always agrees with you, you have hired the wrong person.

A good brief creates the conditions for honest challenge from day one.

A practical starting point

If you are putting together a brief for an external partner right now, here is a simple structure that covers what actually matters. Not a template. Templates produce template answers. These are questions worth sitting with honestly before you write a word.

What is the real problem? Not the presenting issue. The one underneath it. If you had to explain this to someone with no stake in the outcome, what would you say?

What does success actually look like? In concrete terms, six months from now. Not the aspiration. The observable change.

What have you already tried? And what stopped it? Even a partial answer here is enormously useful.

Who needs to be on board? Name them. Include the ones who are currently not.

What is the deadline behind the deadline? What external or internal pressure makes this urgent right now?

What is the one thing you are not sure you want to hear? Write it down. Then make sure the brief creates space for the external partner to say it anyway.

And one final test, from someone who has been on both sides of this table:

Before you send the brief, ask yourself if you would be happy receiving it.

That question alone filters out about half the problems before they start.

You can find more on how Linelia approaches project setup and consulting partnerships on the services page. If you are currently putting together a brief for an upcoming project and want a second perspective before you send it, the fastest way is a short conversation.

Reach out via linelia.io/contact or connect with me directly on LinkedIn.

Common questions

The post Stop briefing suppliers. Start briefing partners. appeared first on Linelia.io.

This week is my last at RheinEnergie.

Not dramatic. Not surprising. It was agreed from day one. And yet here I am, sitting in a meeting room in Cologne, looking at an agenda I built myself, thinking: what actually remains?

Not for the company. That’s documented, handed over, carried forward.

For me. And honestly, it’s a good feeling.

Interim management isn’t a sprint. It just feels like one.

When I started the mandate, the brief was clear: accelerate digital transformation, build structures, enable a team, gain marketing and sales growth. All with an end date attached.

What I underestimated: how deeply a fixed-term mandate changes the way you work.

There’s no time for long warm-up phases. You can’t defer things to “later.” Every meeting counts, every decision carries weight. That sharpens your focus on what truly matters, faster than any permanent role ever could.

And yet that’s also the beauty of it: you build something you won’t finish yourself. You create the foundation, and then you trust the team to take it further. That trust – and seeing them do exactly that – is one of the most rewarding parts of this work.

Building structures is one thing.
Building a team and a system that others can take forward and scale…that’s always been my definition of success.

What energy companies actually need — versus what they think they need

RheinEnergie is not a startup. It’s a company with history, with grown structures, with people who have been doing their jobs well for years, while operating in an industry that’s changing faster than ever before.

What I encounter again and again in organisations like this: the desire for transformation is genuine. The willingness to truly disrupt existing processes to get there, often isn’t.

That’s not a weakness, it’s human. People who have spent years building a system will defend it. People who carry responsibility protect themselves against failure. And people who are accountable for daily delivery simply don’t have the bandwidth to simultaneously reinvent everything.

That’s precisely where outside perspective creates value. Not because external consultants are smarter.

But because we have nothing internal to protect and everything to prove through results.

The uncomfortable conversation and why it matters

When I look back at the moments where I genuinely moved something, they were rarely the big presentations.

They were the uncomfortable conversations.

The one where I told the leadership team that a particular process wouldn’t scale — even though it had just been proudly showcased.
The moment I openly challenged a priority that seemed settled.
The room where I said, as an outsider, what nobody inside was willing to say.

None of that feels comfortable in the moment. But when the team is open to that kind of honesty – and this team definitely was – it becomes genuinely energizing. That openness is what makes transformation actually happen.

You’re not brought in for validation.
You’re brought in for clarity.

And when the team embraces that, remarkable things happen.

What remains

A mandate ends. But what was built stays.

Structures that keep working without you.
Decisions that got made because someone created the space for them.
A team that is now ready to take full ownership and continue scaling. I’m genuinely excited to see where they take it.

That’s the goal of good interim management:
not to create dependency, but to leave capability behind.

What I can say: I’m leaving this mandate with more than I brought. A deeper understanding of an industry in transition.

Real respect for the people inside large organizations who push for change every day. And the confidence that comes from building something that continues on its own.

The question that stays with me

How do you hand over something that isn’t finished?

Transformation isn’t a project with a sign-off sheet. It’s an ongoing process. And yet there’s always this moment where someone from the outside passes the baton and says: from here, this is yours.

I don’t have a clean answer to that. But I believe it’s not about finishing everything. It’s about taking the right things far enough that they continue on their own.

That’s the most honest goal an interim manager can have. And in this case, I’m proud of what we built together.

If you’re curious how I support organisations through digital transformation and interim leadership, you can find more about my work here: Linelia’s services.

And as always, I’m happy to hear from you. If you’d like to exchange ideas or explore how we might work together, feel free to reach out via my contact page or connect with me directly on LinkedIn.

The post What remains when the mandate ends appeared first on Linelia.io.

Lately, I’ve had a few moments in projects where I caught myself thinking:

This would have taken a full team a few years ago.

Now it’s a conversation, a few iterations… and we’re already moving. Not because we’re cutting corners.

But because AI is removing a lot of the “busy work” that used to justify large teams.

This shift is already changing AI consulting vs traditional consulting in a very practical way.

And that changes something fundamental:

What companies actually need from consultants.

5 things that are shifting right now

1. More people doesn’t mean more progress anymore

For a long time, adding people was the default answer.

• More analysts.
• More slides.
• More capacity.

Today, a lot of that work is simply… gone.
Or at least massively compressed.

Which leads to a slightly uncomfortable truth:
More people often just means more coordination.

And coordination rarely moves things forward.

2. “Having seen many companies” is not the same as having run one

This is probably the biggest gap I see.

You can work on dozens of projects…
and still never experience what it actually means to carry responsibility inside an organization.

Because inside, things look different.

Decisions are not clean.
Trade-offs are real.
Politics are part of the game.
And once something goes wrong, you don’t move on to the next project.

You stay with it.

That changes how you think.

And it shows very quickly in the kind of recommendations you make.

3. Speed no longer comes from capacity. It comes from clarity.

The old way of consulting:
→ more (junior) people = faster progress

The reality:
→ more people = more alignment loops
→ AI removes a lot of the heavy lifting.

What’s left now is:
• understanding the problem
• making decisions
• moving forward

And that doesn’t scale well with team size.

4. A lot of “consulting work” was never really about solving the problem

If we’re honest, a big part of traditional project work goes into things like:

• internal alignment
• status updates
• formatting slides
• preparing the next steering

Necessary? Often yes.
Directly solving the problem? Not really.

In lean setups, most of this disappears.

And suddenly, you see very clearly what actually matters.

5. Impact becomes visible much faster

In the end, the question is simple:

Is anything actually changing?

Not:
• how impressive the deck looks
• how structured the framework is

But:
• are decisions made
• are things moving
• does the organization feel it

With fewer layers and faster cycles, that becomes visible very quickly.

And it’s much harder to hide behind process.

This is where the difference between AI consulting vs traditional consulting becomes very visible in real projects.

Where AI really comes into play

AI is not replacing consulting.

But it is removing a lot of what used to justify large structures and massive costs.

AI can:
• structure messy topics in minutes
• create first versions instantly
• explore scenarios without long preparation

Which means:

Less production, more judgment.

And that’s exactly where experience matters.

Tools that make this possible in practice

All of this sounds abstract until you actually use it in your day-to-day work.

A few tools I rely on quite heavily right now:

n8n
For automating workflows that used to take manual effort.
Connecting tools, triggering processes, moving data around without thinking about it twice.

Onepage
For getting from idea to something tangible very quickly.
Landing pages, MVPs, simple setups that help you test and move instead of overthinking.

LeChat, Claude and ChatGPT (incl. custom GPTs)
For structuring thoughts, drafting first versions, exploring options, and pressure-testing ideas.
Custom GPTs especially help me to reuse patterns, frameworks and ways of thinking across projects.

Notion
As a central place to structure ideas, notes, and ongoing work.
Less about documentation, more about keeping things connected and accessible.

PopAi (or beautiful.ai, if you prefer)
For turning rough ideas into clean, structured presentations quickly.
Not to create “perfect slides”, but to get to a point where you can discuss something real.

None of these tools are magic.
But combined with experience, they remove a lot of friction.

And that’s exactly what changes how fast you can move.

P.S.: If you’re interested in learning more about my tech setup, you might want to check out this post as well: The first 150 days

Why this matters to me

Because this is exactly why I enjoy my current setup so much.

A lean structure.
Real experience from inside organizations.
And tools that remove a lot of overhead.

It creates a way of working that feels much closer to reality.

And, to be honest, much harder to fake.

If you’re looking for a more direct, hands-on way to move topics forward, you can find more about how I work here: Linelia’s services.

And if you’d like to exchange thoughts or explore a potential collaboration, feel free to reach out via my contact page or connect with me on LinkedIn.

The post Why Small, Senior Teams Are Winning in the Age of AI appeared first on Linelia.io.