Hey folks, I'm Swati.
Welcome back to my weekly newsletter.
This newsletter is those conversations: what I'm seeing, thinking, and what I'd tell you if we were grabbing coffee.
This week's edition is about answering the question that was actually asked.
But before that:
When someone gives you a task, what's your first instinct?
I recently needed a marketing plan covering billboards, digital, PR, etc., and already knew what we needed at Masters' Union.
I just needed someone to tell me how they'd execute it and what it would cost.
So I met with a PR consulting firm with a simple brief: come back in two days with a plan and costs.
They came back with a 40-slide deck after two weeks.
It had audience segmentation, competitor benchmarking and analytics that looked like a Bain or BCG engagement. All of it was great, but I didn’t need any of it.
And this isn't just an agency thing.
Your manager asks for a status update and you send them a five-page document.
Someone asks a clear question and you come back with an answer to a bigger, more impressive question that nobody asked.
This is how we're wired apparently.
To be more specific, one of their experiments was a LEGO challenge, where 59% of participants added extra bricks when removing one brick would have solved it for free.
TLDR: We do more when doing less would have been the answer.
If someone asks you for something this week, change four things.
What you heard and what they meant might be two different things.
"Just to confirm, you need a plan with costs by Thursday. Should I include media recommendations or are you handling that separately?"
That message will take a minute to write but it will save you days of wasted work.
The BetterBriefs Project surveyed 1,700 marketers and agency staff across 70 countries.
80% of marketers think they write good briefs, and only 10% of agencies agree.
A third of all marketing budgets get wasted on work that doesn't match what was asked for, and most of it comes from assumptions nobody checked.
"Do you want a detailed deck or a one-page summary? Are you presenting this to someone or making a decision yourself?"
Most people never ask this because it feels like you don't know what you're doing but it’s actually the opposite.
A doctor who asks about your symptoms before prescribing isn't less competent.
When I said I needed a plan and a cost, I meant a one-pager, maybe two, but the agency defaulted to a 40-slide deck because that's what they're used to delivering.
This is the hardest one.
You've done a great competitor analysis or found some great data and you want to show it off. If nobody asks for it, then it's a distraction.
The best people I've worked with send a clean and tight answer first, then say "We also looked at X, happy to share if useful."
That one line shows you did the thinking without making the other person wade through it.
When I said two days, I meant two days.
The decision I needed to make had a deadline and I needed inputs to make it, but the agency defaulted to their own process.
So by the time they came back, the window had moved.
Colin Powell had a rule: decide when you have between 40% and 70% of the information.
Below 40%, you're guessing and above 70%, you've waited too long.
A good-enough plan on Tuesday beats a perfect plan three Fridays from now.
I think in India this runs deeper.
We score 77 on Hofstede's Power Distance Index, while the US scores 40.
Asking a clarifying question can feel like you're challenging someone senior, so people default to doing the maximum possible work instead.
A 40-slide deck becomes a respect signal and it says “I took this seriously”, but what actually signals respect is delivering exactly what was asked.
I'm not saying don't be thorough.
I'm saying be thorough about the right thing and be within the timeline
What's the worst mismatch you've seen between what was asked and what was delivered?
Hit reply. I read every email.
Swati
PS: If you work with agencies, vendors, or even just present to your manager, forward this. It might save everyone a lot of time.