Post-Script: What Should We Ask of Questions?

“Creativity is the act of looking for the right question, and strategy is the art of finding the answer. They have to go hand-in-hand for a project to work, and this back-and-forth involves a commitment to collaboration from both our team and our clients.”

At the end of May, I wrapped up my time as Amenable’s Creative Director. It’s a decision that’s got me feeling nostalgic because a lot of our brand was my idea—the name, how we talk about ourselves, and the language we use with clients. My goal here was to always help our team and clients ask good questions, and after five years here, I have come to the conclusion that a project’s success is almost entirely contingent on someone’s relationship to questions. Without a consistent willingness to engage with them, clients fall into one of three traps:

Scope Crawl Over Scope Creep

You’ve probably heard of “scope creep,” but even if you haven’t, you’ve certainly experienced it. This is where a project gradually bloats or loses focus until it’s unrecognizable. With tight budgets and tight deadlines, most of our clients do a great job of working with us to prevent creep.

A sneakier, more common issue is what I’m calling “scope crawl.” I’m not sure if I coined the phrase, but let’s pretend that I did. This is essentially a trap in which clients view questions as an obligation—a necessary evil to resolve as efficiently as possible.

Scope crawl is where the impulse to keep a project focused causes it to become shortsighted, losing the vision and momentum that give it purpose. The project then inches its way to being finished instead of complete. Amenable asks a lot of questions as part of our collaborative process, and these are what give each project its unique and meaningful shape. Without that, a logo is just a logo.

Our team believes a good project should test the limits of its scope without threatening them. In other words, any deliverable should have tangible impact beyond its surface-level goal. A new website should strengthen a brand. A rebrand should lead to better organizational health.

The worst projects somehow embody both creep and crawl—creepy-crawlers, if you will.

Novelty Over Novels

A bad question can never elicit a good answer. This is the second trap—asking the wrong question.

Clients often come to us asking some variation of can you give me what I want?, but the problem is that this question is usually rooted in little more than a desire for novelty.

I want a new website.
I want a new brand.
I want a new approach to socials.

These are understandable goals, but they are missing a crucial “why,” and that leaves them without a direction. The new website will either feel too much or not enough like your peers. The brand won’t be better—just different.

And this is why it’s better to think like a novelist and envision the narrative of your work. Each of the above deliverables can be great resources, but only if you’re thinking about how they are situated in the overall story of your organization. How can a new website move you further along? What chapter does a new logo initiate?

These are questions we try to help clients ask and answer, but it’s vital that they begin with them asking a different starting question:

Where do I want to end up?

It’s the hardest question to answer, but it’s one we’re happy to help with. If you know your destination, you can make good decisions about how you’ll get there.

Deferral Over Definitions

The final trap that clients fall into is that of deferral masked as deference—an unwillingness to answer questions entirely. This is where people dismiss decision-making, either as low-priority or “something we’ll leave up to the experts.” Unfortunately, opinions still exist, even if they go unvoiced.

This trap is likely a reflection of the prior one. Big picture questions about one’s work can feel like an existential crisis, and sometimes it’s just easier to pretend you don’t want to answer them, rather than that you can’t.

The consequences of this trap typically don’t show themselves until the end of a project, at which point the client realizes the stakes are high, and they need to make sure they get what they want.

It’s sort of like when you ask your friend what they want for dinner, and I don’t care becomes pizza as soon as you walk into Raising Cane’s.

The problem is that priorities are forced to become preferences if they aren’t made clear early on. Personal tastes are a vital part of every project, but they require full transparency at the beginning if they are to be honored.

What’s the Conclusion?

So what? What’s the takeaway with all this?

Well, those are great questions. That’s a step in the right direction.

Creativity is the act of looking for the right question, and strategy is the art of finding the answer. They have to go hand-in-hand for a project to work, and this back-and-forth involves a commitment to collaboration from both our team and our clients. Most importantly, it requires an understanding that questions are an invitation, not a threat, and we should always be looking for the next question.