You want us in the room.

Sometimes someone contacts us with a very clear brief. Other times the explanation starts with, “I don’t really know how to describe this.” I’m quite comfortable with the second version.

You might have a project that keeps going round in circles. An opportunity nobody knows what to do with. A team that agrees something needs to change but has six different opinions about what. You don’t necessarily need another supplier at that point. You need a useful conversation with someone who is not already caught up in it.

A useful conversation

A large part of what I do is listen. Properly. Not wait for a gap so I can announce the clever thing I thought of while you were still speaking.

I want to hear how you explain the situation, what you return to and which parts don’t quite agree with each other. If a question opens up something important, we follow it. There is no prize for finishing my list while missing the thing we actually needed to discuss.

That is where my interest in people comes into the work. A business decision might look straightforward on paper and feel anything but straightforward to the people making it. Their history, responsibilities and ambitions affect how they see the options. Understanding that does not mean ignoring the commercial facts. It helps us understand the decision we are really asking them to make.

I will challenge something when it needs challenging. But I’m not there to demonstrate that I’m the smartest person in the room or that everyone else has been doing it wrong. There is a big difference between saying, “You’ve got this wrong,” and saying, “This is what I’m seeing. Does that fit with what’s actually happening?”

Sometimes it does. Sometimes there is a piece of information I haven’t heard yet. That is why it is a conversation.

And sometimes the person already has a good answer. They’ve been looking at it for so long, or hearing so many competing views, that they have lost confidence in it. The useful contribution can be helping them examine it properly and decide whether to act, rather than inventing a different answer so I can put my name on it.

I get a real kick out of that moment when somebody sees a way forward. You can feel the conversation change. They stop going over the problem and start talking about what they are going to do.

A practical way forward

That doesn’t mean a good session is a motivational performance. Enthusiasm is lovely, but it needs something underneath it. We should be clear about the recommendation, the reasons behind it and what remains uncertain. An idea that needs testing should leave the room as an idea that needs testing, not as a guarantee because we all got excited about it.

The outcome might be a new direction, a better brief, one bloody good idea or the decision not to proceed with something. We agree what useful work looks like for that engagement. You do not have to buy a rebrand afterwards to justify having us there.

My favourite part is often helping someone put words around the thing they have been circling without quite reaching. Once we can see it clearly, we can have a much better conversation about what to do.

Sometimes you need an agency to make something. Sometimes you need the right people in the room before deciding what to make. We happen to do both.