A brief is a hypothesis the client has about their own business. It is rarely wrong about the symptom. It is almost always wrong about the cause.
Our job, in the first two weeks of any engagement, is to find the bit of the brief that isn't true. Sometimes it's the audience. Sometimes it's the budget. Once, memorably, it was the product. The brief said 'launch'; the work said 'don't.'
The conversation where we hand back a rewritten brief is the moment the client starts paying for the consultancy. Until then, we are an expensive set of hands. After it, we are the people in the room who get asked the question before the decision is made.
We never deliver the original brief. If a client insists, we decline the work. Not as a posture — as a practical matter. A brief we cannot improve is a brief we cannot add value to, and we charge too much to add no value.
