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
At minimum: the real problem (not the presenting one), what success looks like in concrete terms, what has already been tried internally, who the key decision-makers and blockers are, and the actual deadline behind the official one. These are the things that most determine whether an engagement moves fast or stalls.
Long enough to answer the questions that matter, short enough to force clarity. Two to four pages is usually right. A brief that runs to twenty pages often signals that the thinking has not been done yet. A brief that runs to half a page usually means important context has been left out.
A brief describes the problem and the context. A scope of work describes what will be done in response. The brief comes first, and a good one directly shapes what ends up in the scope. Skipping the brief and going straight to scope usually means you end up describing activities rather than solving the right problem.
When the internal structure cannot move fast enough, when you need outside objectivity on a problem that has become too politically loaded internally, or when a specific capability gap opens mid-project. The key in any of these situations is defining the brief and the mandate clearly from the start, so the external partner can actually work at the pace the situation requires.