The most expensive communication mistake professionals make, by Ruth Oji

A colleague once sent me a project brief that was, by any measure, impressively detailed. Three pages of specifications, timelines broken down by week, deliverables listed with precision. When I asked a clarifying question about the project’s underlying purpose, she seemed surprised. “It’s all in the document,” she said. And it was. Every word was clear, and every sentence was grammatically sound. Yet I had no idea what problem we were actually trying to solve or wh