Back to the Brief: Escaping the Feedback Loop

When we first started working on our project, we were full of energy, ideas, and innovation. We had ideas flying, brainstorming sessions, and lots of effort going in. Everyone was contributing, everyone seemed motivated – and yet, something was not quite working. We were busy, that’s for sure, but the busyness wasn’t translating into meaningful output. It was like we were sprinting in circles. And it did not feel like we were wrong at first: we were producing work, meeting, discussing, and changing.  But after a while, that momentum started to feel… directionless. We were busy—but the busier we got, the more we began to notice that things weren’t quite coming together the way we expected.

We had been working hard, but we weren’t working together in a fully aligned way. Each of us had different interpretations of the brief, and while that diversity of thought can be valuable, in this case it led to some fragmentation. Our efforts weren’t always coordinated, and that started to show in our output.

As the client’s feedback started rolling in, we realised just how much it was evident in the output. The client was not unhappy with the work we were doing, but it wasn’t satisfactory either. We were clearly missing the mark, and we couldn’t understand why. It was constructive, patient, and thankfully, not discouraging—but it was clear. Despite all the effort we’d put in, we hadn’t quite delivered the depth or clarity they were expecting. It was frustrating, mostly because we hadn’t realized we were off-course until that point.

Our first instinct was to do more. More research, more analysis, more pages, more data. But irrespective of how much we added, the feedback only improved incrementally. We were trying to treat the symptoms, not the cause. The issue wasn’t that we weren’t doing enough—it was that we hadn’t built a shared understanding of what we should be doing. 

So, we took a deep breath, regrouped, and went back to the drawing board. We studied our scope, our client, and our countries of interest. We asked ourselves some important questions: What does the client truly want from us? What does "depth of analysis" actually mean in this context? Where had we made assumptions instead of clarifying expectations?

This was a turning point. Instead of trying to get deliverables done, we slowed down and tried to focus on alignment, and we still are. Prof. Minard’s guidance through this process helped us establish a new workflow, and made us realise that there was a huge communication gap. We created shared planning documents, clarified individual responsibilities, and set up a consistent rhythm for internal check-ins. We also improved how we communicated with the client—making our updates more structured and our questions more precise.

While these changes are new, I can already see the significant impact they have had. They’ve made us work smarter and smoother, and we are feeling more confident in the work we put out. Team discussions are more focused, and the new round of client feedback has been much more positive. That’s how I know that now, we are on the right track. Alignment isn’t something you check off at the start and forget. It has to be nurtured continuously. Especially in group work, it’s easy to assume everyone’s on the same page just because everyone is working. But real alignment takes more than effort—it takes communication, planning, and the willingness to pause and recalibrate when things don’t feel right.

Even though we didn’t get things right the first time, I’ve learnt a valuable lesson through this process. Not everything goes right the first time around, and that is okay. What matters is how you decide to move forward and course correct – which requires adaptation, commitment, and listening. The ability to turn feedback to fuel, shift confusion to clarity, and turn individual contributions to a truly collaborative output, that’s what makes or breaks a project like this.