“Can You Just…?” – The Silent Killer of Good Strategy (and Sanity)
“Give me the freedom of a tight brief.” - David Ogilvy (Advertising legend & My Hero)
Insights
Sep 19, 2025
If you’ve worked in strategy, data science, IT, creative, or frankly any specialist department, you’ve probably heard this sentence:
“Can you just put together a quick strategy for this?”
“Can you just help me fix this tech thing?”
“Can you just pull some insights?”
The “Can you just…” request is almost always missing one critical thing: a brief.
No context. No background. No objectives. Just an expectation that you’ll magically know what’s needed, why it’s needed, and how it should be done, all without a starting point.
It’s not malicious. It’s not always laziness. But it is a cultural and behavioural pattern that costs organisations time, money, and quality.
Where This Happens (and It’s Not Just Strategy)
In Strategy & Research: “We need a strategy for xyz” - but no target audience, no business objective, no market context.
In IT: “My laptop’s acting weird, can you fix it?” - but no ticket, no error logs, no replication steps.
In Creative: “We need a quick visual” - but no insights, no messaging, no usage context.
In Finance: “Can you just check these numbers?” - but no source data, no explanation of what’s wrong.
It’s everywhere. Different departments, same pattern: a request without the raw materials to actually fulfil it.
Why It Happens – The Human Side of Missing Briefs
After years of watching this play out, the “Can you just…” problem isn’t just laziness or bad process, it’s a wild storm of human psychology, organisational culture, and misplaced assumptions.
Here’s a more nuanced breakdown:
1. The Illusion of Shared Context
People assume you know what they know. Psychologists call this the curse of knowledge, once you know something, it’s hard to imagine not knowing it.
In 2013, Yahoo’s then-CEO Marissa Mayer famously banned remote work. Internally, she believed everyone understood the rationale, improving collaboration and speed. But many employees had no context for the decision, leading to backlash and misinterpretation. The missing “brief” was the why, and without it, the move felt arbitrary (and honestly out of touch).
2. The Speed Culture Effect
Modern business worships speed. In environments like tech startups or high-pressure agencies, the mantra is “move fast and break things” (thanks, Mark Zuckerberg). The problem? Speed without clarity often means you break the wrong things.
Facebook’s (now Meta) early product launches often skipped formal briefs in favour of “ship it now, fix it later.” While this worked for innovation, it also led to major missteps, like the 2014 “emotional contagion” experiment, which sparked public outrage because the purpose and parameters weren’t clearly communicated internally or externally.
3. The Expert-as-Mind-Reader Myth
When you’re the “strategy person,” “creative genius,” or “IT wizard,” people believe you can just figure it out. This is cognitive outsourcing, they hand you the problem and mentally tick it off their list, assuming you’ll fill in the blanks.
Steve Jobs was notorious for walking into a room and saying something like, “This isn’t good enough, make it better.” The teams at Apple often had to reverse-engineer what “better” meant. While Jobs had a clear vision in his head, the lack of explicit briefs meant teams relied heavily on interpreting his taste and past decisions.
4. Effort Avoidance (a.k.a. The Path of Least Resistance)
Humans are wired to conserve energy. Writing a proper brief feels like work, so the brain looks for shortcuts, like handing the problem to someone else without doing the prep.
In 2017, a leaked memo from Uber revealed that many internal teams were working on overlapping projects with unclear objectives. Employees admitted they often started work based on vague Slack messages or hallway conversations; no documentation, no alignment. The result? Duplicated work and wasted millions.
5. Cultural Shortcuts and Informal Norms
In some companies, informal requests are part of the DNA. “We’re scrappy” becomes an excuse for skipping process. Over time, this becomes the only way people know how to work.
Elon Musk has said at Tesla and SpaceX, “If you see something that needs fixing, just fix it.” While this encourages initiative, it also means people sometimes jump into projects without understanding the bigger picture, leading to rework when the “fix” doesn’t align with strategic goals.
What Some People Think About It:
Jeff Bezos:
“If you can’t write it down, you can’t debate it.”
Bezos famously banned PowerPoint in Amazon meetings, insisting on six-page narrative memos instead. Why? Because he knew that without a written brief, ideas stay fuzzy, and decisions get made on incomplete information.
Sheryl Sandberg:
“Done is better than perfect, but not if you don’t know what ‘done’ means.”
Sandberg has spoken about the need for clarity before execution, especially in high-speed environments.
David Ogilvy:
“Give me the freedom of a tight brief.”
Ogilvy understood that constraints and clarity enable creativity, they don’t stifle it.
Satya Nadella:
“Clarity is the most underrated leadership quality.”
Nadella has repeatedly stressed that his job as CEO is to create clarity where there is ambiguity; because without it, teams spin their wheels.
The Impact – Why This Hurts More Than It Seems
From an advertising and strategy perspective:
Shallow Solutions: Without a clear brief, you solve the wrong problem or only part of it.
Wasted Resources: Time is spent clarifying, redoing, or fixing instead of delivering value.
Inconsistent Quality: The output depends on guesswork, not alignment.
From a general business perspective:
Hidden Costs: Every “quick” unbriefed request has a compounding effect on productivity.
Burnout Risk: Specialists become frustrated and disengaged when they’re constantly working blind.
Erosion of Trust: Stakeholders lose faith when deliverables miss the mark, even though the root cause was unclear input.
What I Do (and This Might Help You)
Over the years, I’ve learned that you can’t just tell people to “send a brief”, you have to make it easy, habitual, and culturally normal.
Here’s what’s worked for me:
Create a “Minimum Viable Brief” Template
A one-pager with the absolute essentials:
What’s the objective?
Who’s it for?
What’s the context?
What’s the deadline?
Any constraints or must-haves?
This removes the “I don’t have time to write a brief” excuse.
Normalize the Pause
I’ve trained myself to respond to vague requests with:
“Happy to help, can you give me the top three things I need to know before I start?”
It’s friendly, but it forces clarity.
Make the Process Visible
Show stakeholders the difference between work done with a brief vs. without. People change faster when they see the cost of skipping steps.Build a Culture of ‘Front-Loading’ Thinking
Encourage teams to see briefing as part of the work, not a prelude to it. This is a mindset shift, and it takes repetition.Use Technology as a Gatekeeper
In IT, tickets are mandatory. In strategy, you can do the same: no work starts without a filled-out form or intake doc.
Breaking the Habit
If you want to remove the “Can you just…” culture from your organisation:
Lead by example: always provide context when you make requests.
Reward good briefing: acknowledge and thank people who give clear inputs.
Make it painless: the easier it is to brief, the more likely it’ll happen.
Educate on the why: people comply more when they understand the impact.
Moral Of My Story:
A brief is an essential bridge.
It connects what’s in someone’s head to what needs to happen in the real world. Without it, you’re asking people to build without blueprints, and then wondering why the house doesn’t look right.
So next time you’re tempted to say, “Can you just…?”, pause. Give the context. Share the objective. You’ll get better work, faster, with fewer headaches.
And if you’re on the receiving end?
Smile, ask for the brief, and remember... even magic needs instructions.
More to Discover
“Can You Just…?” – The Silent Killer of Good Strategy (and Sanity)
“Give me the freedom of a tight brief.” - David Ogilvy (Advertising legend & My Hero)
Insights
Sep 19, 2025
If you’ve worked in strategy, data science, IT, creative, or frankly any specialist department, you’ve probably heard this sentence:
“Can you just put together a quick strategy for this?”
“Can you just help me fix this tech thing?”
“Can you just pull some insights?”
The “Can you just…” request is almost always missing one critical thing: a brief.
No context. No background. No objectives. Just an expectation that you’ll magically know what’s needed, why it’s needed, and how it should be done, all without a starting point.
It’s not malicious. It’s not always laziness. But it is a cultural and behavioural pattern that costs organisations time, money, and quality.
Where This Happens (and It’s Not Just Strategy)
In Strategy & Research: “We need a strategy for xyz” - but no target audience, no business objective, no market context.
In IT: “My laptop’s acting weird, can you fix it?” - but no ticket, no error logs, no replication steps.
In Creative: “We need a quick visual” - but no insights, no messaging, no usage context.
In Finance: “Can you just check these numbers?” - but no source data, no explanation of what’s wrong.
It’s everywhere. Different departments, same pattern: a request without the raw materials to actually fulfil it.
Why It Happens – The Human Side of Missing Briefs
After years of watching this play out, the “Can you just…” problem isn’t just laziness or bad process, it’s a wild storm of human psychology, organisational culture, and misplaced assumptions.
Here’s a more nuanced breakdown:
1. The Illusion of Shared Context
People assume you know what they know. Psychologists call this the curse of knowledge, once you know something, it’s hard to imagine not knowing it.
In 2013, Yahoo’s then-CEO Marissa Mayer famously banned remote work. Internally, she believed everyone understood the rationale, improving collaboration and speed. But many employees had no context for the decision, leading to backlash and misinterpretation. The missing “brief” was the why, and without it, the move felt arbitrary (and honestly out of touch).
2. The Speed Culture Effect
Modern business worships speed. In environments like tech startups or high-pressure agencies, the mantra is “move fast and break things” (thanks, Mark Zuckerberg). The problem? Speed without clarity often means you break the wrong things.
Facebook’s (now Meta) early product launches often skipped formal briefs in favour of “ship it now, fix it later.” While this worked for innovation, it also led to major missteps, like the 2014 “emotional contagion” experiment, which sparked public outrage because the purpose and parameters weren’t clearly communicated internally or externally.
3. The Expert-as-Mind-Reader Myth
When you’re the “strategy person,” “creative genius,” or “IT wizard,” people believe you can just figure it out. This is cognitive outsourcing, they hand you the problem and mentally tick it off their list, assuming you’ll fill in the blanks.
Steve Jobs was notorious for walking into a room and saying something like, “This isn’t good enough, make it better.” The teams at Apple often had to reverse-engineer what “better” meant. While Jobs had a clear vision in his head, the lack of explicit briefs meant teams relied heavily on interpreting his taste and past decisions.
4. Effort Avoidance (a.k.a. The Path of Least Resistance)
Humans are wired to conserve energy. Writing a proper brief feels like work, so the brain looks for shortcuts, like handing the problem to someone else without doing the prep.
In 2017, a leaked memo from Uber revealed that many internal teams were working on overlapping projects with unclear objectives. Employees admitted they often started work based on vague Slack messages or hallway conversations; no documentation, no alignment. The result? Duplicated work and wasted millions.
5. Cultural Shortcuts and Informal Norms
In some companies, informal requests are part of the DNA. “We’re scrappy” becomes an excuse for skipping process. Over time, this becomes the only way people know how to work.
Elon Musk has said at Tesla and SpaceX, “If you see something that needs fixing, just fix it.” While this encourages initiative, it also means people sometimes jump into projects without understanding the bigger picture, leading to rework when the “fix” doesn’t align with strategic goals.
What Some People Think About It:
Jeff Bezos:
“If you can’t write it down, you can’t debate it.”
Bezos famously banned PowerPoint in Amazon meetings, insisting on six-page narrative memos instead. Why? Because he knew that without a written brief, ideas stay fuzzy, and decisions get made on incomplete information.
Sheryl Sandberg:
“Done is better than perfect, but not if you don’t know what ‘done’ means.”
Sandberg has spoken about the need for clarity before execution, especially in high-speed environments.
David Ogilvy:
“Give me the freedom of a tight brief.”
Ogilvy understood that constraints and clarity enable creativity, they don’t stifle it.
Satya Nadella:
“Clarity is the most underrated leadership quality.”
Nadella has repeatedly stressed that his job as CEO is to create clarity where there is ambiguity; because without it, teams spin their wheels.
The Impact – Why This Hurts More Than It Seems
From an advertising and strategy perspective:
Shallow Solutions: Without a clear brief, you solve the wrong problem or only part of it.
Wasted Resources: Time is spent clarifying, redoing, or fixing instead of delivering value.
Inconsistent Quality: The output depends on guesswork, not alignment.
From a general business perspective:
Hidden Costs: Every “quick” unbriefed request has a compounding effect on productivity.
Burnout Risk: Specialists become frustrated and disengaged when they’re constantly working blind.
Erosion of Trust: Stakeholders lose faith when deliverables miss the mark, even though the root cause was unclear input.
What I Do (and This Might Help You)
Over the years, I’ve learned that you can’t just tell people to “send a brief”, you have to make it easy, habitual, and culturally normal.
Here’s what’s worked for me:
Create a “Minimum Viable Brief” Template
A one-pager with the absolute essentials:
What’s the objective?
Who’s it for?
What’s the context?
What’s the deadline?
Any constraints or must-haves?
This removes the “I don’t have time to write a brief” excuse.
Normalize the Pause
I’ve trained myself to respond to vague requests with:
“Happy to help, can you give me the top three things I need to know before I start?”
It’s friendly, but it forces clarity.
Make the Process Visible
Show stakeholders the difference between work done with a brief vs. without. People change faster when they see the cost of skipping steps.Build a Culture of ‘Front-Loading’ Thinking
Encourage teams to see briefing as part of the work, not a prelude to it. This is a mindset shift, and it takes repetition.Use Technology as a Gatekeeper
In IT, tickets are mandatory. In strategy, you can do the same: no work starts without a filled-out form or intake doc.
Breaking the Habit
If you want to remove the “Can you just…” culture from your organisation:
Lead by example: always provide context when you make requests.
Reward good briefing: acknowledge and thank people who give clear inputs.
Make it painless: the easier it is to brief, the more likely it’ll happen.
Educate on the why: people comply more when they understand the impact.
Moral Of My Story:
A brief is an essential bridge.
It connects what’s in someone’s head to what needs to happen in the real world. Without it, you’re asking people to build without blueprints, and then wondering why the house doesn’t look right.
So next time you’re tempted to say, “Can you just…?”, pause. Give the context. Share the objective. You’ll get better work, faster, with fewer headaches.
And if you’re on the receiving end?
Smile, ask for the brief, and remember... even magic needs instructions.
More to Discover
“Can You Just…?” – The Silent Killer of Good Strategy (and Sanity)
“Give me the freedom of a tight brief.” - David Ogilvy (Advertising legend & My Hero)
Insights
Sep 19, 2025
If you’ve worked in strategy, data science, IT, creative, or frankly any specialist department, you’ve probably heard this sentence:
“Can you just put together a quick strategy for this?”
“Can you just help me fix this tech thing?”
“Can you just pull some insights?”
The “Can you just…” request is almost always missing one critical thing: a brief.
No context. No background. No objectives. Just an expectation that you’ll magically know what’s needed, why it’s needed, and how it should be done, all without a starting point.
It’s not malicious. It’s not always laziness. But it is a cultural and behavioural pattern that costs organisations time, money, and quality.
Where This Happens (and It’s Not Just Strategy)
In Strategy & Research: “We need a strategy for xyz” - but no target audience, no business objective, no market context.
In IT: “My laptop’s acting weird, can you fix it?” - but no ticket, no error logs, no replication steps.
In Creative: “We need a quick visual” - but no insights, no messaging, no usage context.
In Finance: “Can you just check these numbers?” - but no source data, no explanation of what’s wrong.
It’s everywhere. Different departments, same pattern: a request without the raw materials to actually fulfil it.
Why It Happens – The Human Side of Missing Briefs
After years of watching this play out, the “Can you just…” problem isn’t just laziness or bad process, it’s a wild storm of human psychology, organisational culture, and misplaced assumptions.
Here’s a more nuanced breakdown:
1. The Illusion of Shared Context
People assume you know what they know. Psychologists call this the curse of knowledge, once you know something, it’s hard to imagine not knowing it.
In 2013, Yahoo’s then-CEO Marissa Mayer famously banned remote work. Internally, she believed everyone understood the rationale, improving collaboration and speed. But many employees had no context for the decision, leading to backlash and misinterpretation. The missing “brief” was the why, and without it, the move felt arbitrary (and honestly out of touch).
2. The Speed Culture Effect
Modern business worships speed. In environments like tech startups or high-pressure agencies, the mantra is “move fast and break things” (thanks, Mark Zuckerberg). The problem? Speed without clarity often means you break the wrong things.
Facebook’s (now Meta) early product launches often skipped formal briefs in favour of “ship it now, fix it later.” While this worked for innovation, it also led to major missteps, like the 2014 “emotional contagion” experiment, which sparked public outrage because the purpose and parameters weren’t clearly communicated internally or externally.
3. The Expert-as-Mind-Reader Myth
When you’re the “strategy person,” “creative genius,” or “IT wizard,” people believe you can just figure it out. This is cognitive outsourcing, they hand you the problem and mentally tick it off their list, assuming you’ll fill in the blanks.
Steve Jobs was notorious for walking into a room and saying something like, “This isn’t good enough, make it better.” The teams at Apple often had to reverse-engineer what “better” meant. While Jobs had a clear vision in his head, the lack of explicit briefs meant teams relied heavily on interpreting his taste and past decisions.
4. Effort Avoidance (a.k.a. The Path of Least Resistance)
Humans are wired to conserve energy. Writing a proper brief feels like work, so the brain looks for shortcuts, like handing the problem to someone else without doing the prep.
In 2017, a leaked memo from Uber revealed that many internal teams were working on overlapping projects with unclear objectives. Employees admitted they often started work based on vague Slack messages or hallway conversations; no documentation, no alignment. The result? Duplicated work and wasted millions.
5. Cultural Shortcuts and Informal Norms
In some companies, informal requests are part of the DNA. “We’re scrappy” becomes an excuse for skipping process. Over time, this becomes the only way people know how to work.
Elon Musk has said at Tesla and SpaceX, “If you see something that needs fixing, just fix it.” While this encourages initiative, it also means people sometimes jump into projects without understanding the bigger picture, leading to rework when the “fix” doesn’t align with strategic goals.
What Some People Think About It:
Jeff Bezos:
“If you can’t write it down, you can’t debate it.”
Bezos famously banned PowerPoint in Amazon meetings, insisting on six-page narrative memos instead. Why? Because he knew that without a written brief, ideas stay fuzzy, and decisions get made on incomplete information.
Sheryl Sandberg:
“Done is better than perfect, but not if you don’t know what ‘done’ means.”
Sandberg has spoken about the need for clarity before execution, especially in high-speed environments.
David Ogilvy:
“Give me the freedom of a tight brief.”
Ogilvy understood that constraints and clarity enable creativity, they don’t stifle it.
Satya Nadella:
“Clarity is the most underrated leadership quality.”
Nadella has repeatedly stressed that his job as CEO is to create clarity where there is ambiguity; because without it, teams spin their wheels.
The Impact – Why This Hurts More Than It Seems
From an advertising and strategy perspective:
Shallow Solutions: Without a clear brief, you solve the wrong problem or only part of it.
Wasted Resources: Time is spent clarifying, redoing, or fixing instead of delivering value.
Inconsistent Quality: The output depends on guesswork, not alignment.
From a general business perspective:
Hidden Costs: Every “quick” unbriefed request has a compounding effect on productivity.
Burnout Risk: Specialists become frustrated and disengaged when they’re constantly working blind.
Erosion of Trust: Stakeholders lose faith when deliverables miss the mark, even though the root cause was unclear input.
What I Do (and This Might Help You)
Over the years, I’ve learned that you can’t just tell people to “send a brief”, you have to make it easy, habitual, and culturally normal.
Here’s what’s worked for me:
Create a “Minimum Viable Brief” Template
A one-pager with the absolute essentials:
What’s the objective?
Who’s it for?
What’s the context?
What’s the deadline?
Any constraints or must-haves?
This removes the “I don’t have time to write a brief” excuse.
Normalize the Pause
I’ve trained myself to respond to vague requests with:
“Happy to help, can you give me the top three things I need to know before I start?”
It’s friendly, but it forces clarity.
Make the Process Visible
Show stakeholders the difference between work done with a brief vs. without. People change faster when they see the cost of skipping steps.Build a Culture of ‘Front-Loading’ Thinking
Encourage teams to see briefing as part of the work, not a prelude to it. This is a mindset shift, and it takes repetition.Use Technology as a Gatekeeper
In IT, tickets are mandatory. In strategy, you can do the same: no work starts without a filled-out form or intake doc.
Breaking the Habit
If you want to remove the “Can you just…” culture from your organisation:
Lead by example: always provide context when you make requests.
Reward good briefing: acknowledge and thank people who give clear inputs.
Make it painless: the easier it is to brief, the more likely it’ll happen.
Educate on the why: people comply more when they understand the impact.
Moral Of My Story:
A brief is an essential bridge.
It connects what’s in someone’s head to what needs to happen in the real world. Without it, you’re asking people to build without blueprints, and then wondering why the house doesn’t look right.
So next time you’re tempted to say, “Can you just…?”, pause. Give the context. Share the objective. You’ll get better work, faster, with fewer headaches.
And if you’re on the receiving end?
Smile, ask for the brief, and remember... even magic needs instructions.