“Just do it.” — OK, but… For whom? Why? And what happens with it afterward?
I hear some version of this sentence often. And I'll admit — I've said it myself from time to time. Especially when I was under time pressure, had already been working on a topic for a long time, or simply assumed the topic was self-explanatory.
But every single time I assigned a task without enough context, one of the following happened:
A colleague or direct report delivered something — but completely off target.
The output had the right form, but zero impact on execution.
The work didn't move forward at all, because… it wasn't clear why it mattered.
So I started paying much closer attention to one thing: context.
Why context matters more than the brief itself
A request like “please write me a presentation for the workshop” is useless if I don't also say:
Who's going to be at the workshop?
What mood am I expecting there?
What's the main takeaway I want participants to leave with?
What are my expectations for the goals the workshop needs to deliver?
Without that, I'll end up with a slideshow — not a tool that actually works and provides the framework needed to reach the goals we expect.
What's worked for me in practice
When our team prepares new programs for culture transformation workshops, we now automatically ask ourselves:
Where is the company right now, in time?
What have people experienced internally in recent months? How are external factors affecting the company?
What does leadership actually expect from the change?
And often, in doing this, we realize the “content” itself is actually secondary. What matters first is the frame we set it in. For this purpose, we've built our own checklist of information that's essential to gather in order to properly understand a client's context.
What needs to be said when assigning a task or project
My personal “top five,” based on the 5C model (Content, Context, Constraints, Consequences, Communication)
The most common mistakes I see in teams:
A task gets assigned without explaining “why,” and the output is technically correct but has no life to it.
The brief is too vague, so everyone interprets it their own way.
There's no information about what happens to the result afterward — so it can't be prioritized.
In conclusion
Ever since I started paying closer attention to context, my work has gotten faster, results are more accurate — and, most importantly, people aren't frustrated by misunderstood assignments. The key is always to understand the motivation of the people the assignment is for. They need to be able to find their own “What's in it for me?” in it. Context isn't a needless luxury — it helps people understand the point of what they're doing.
It's not about doing more. It's about doing it right — because we know why, and for whom.