What Answer Do You Want?

This is our best framework for aligning expectations on the level of rigour and precision required when following up on an exec’s question.

What is What Answer Do You Want?

We’ve all been there in a meeting when an exec asks a hard question and one of two bad scenarios occurs:

The Team Overreacts: Most commonly, the team goes into fire drill mode and spends several days or even weeks digging in to answer the question, only to find the exec had just been pondering out loud and didn’t expect any follow-up.
The Team Underreacts: Less commonly, the team does nothing because they assumed the exec was just pondering out loud and, a few days later, get an abrupt, frustrated “where’s my answer?!” request from the exec.

In the first scenario, the team wastes time chasing down the answer to a question the exec didn’t really care about; in the second, the exec doesn’t get what he/she wanted, gets frustrated, and the team now goes into super fire drill mode. Neither are good.

What Answer Do You Want helps us avoid both scenarios.

James learned this framework at Bain, where it was very common for clients to ask follow-up questions. We often broke everything down into time increments beginning with 2:

2-second answer: the exec asks a question and wants an immediate, gut response, the Type 1 answer for Daniel Kahneman Thinking Fast and Slow fans, the Blink response for folks who prefer Malcolm Gladwell.
2-minute answer: the exec asks a question and the person/team answers it with the best of their knowledge, but with no further analysis or research follow-up.
2-hour answer: the person/team answers quickly, but it’s along the lines of, “we think it’s X, but give us a few hours to huddle and make sure; we’ll get back to you this afternoon.”
2-day answer: now we’re in-between an off-the-cuff, my-best-guess answer, and a more extensive piece of analysis requiring greater time investment.
2-week answer: Here, a harder, more important question will require more extensive work to arrive at a well-thought-out answer.
2-month/2 quarter/2 year answer etc.: these time frames are less common following a single question, but we’ve both seen a “Should we acquire X?” or “Should we enter market Y?” as the starting point for a much more extensive piece of research and analysis.

There’s no universal right or wrong answer to every question, but the universal wrong answer is when the exec’s expectations and the team’s expectations are different.

“The universal wrong answer is when the exec’s expectations and the team’s expectations are different.”

Therefore, the power of this framework is that it’s up to both actors to get on the same page:

The individual/team needs to align on expectations: the default is too often to assume every exec question has the same critical level of importance, but that’s rarely the case; so, it’s important to clarify before wasting days, weeks, or even months on a low-value piece of follow-up work.
The exec needs to set clear expectations: we’re publishing this Blueprint as a follow-up to Jeff Weiner’s 3 Levels of Feedback because it’s a different flavour of the same idea of execs being clear on what type of follow-up they want. Execs often underappreciate that a flippant musing or a flippant question can be taken as marching orders if they don’t take the time to be clear upfront on their expectations.

Here’s John having a bit of fun at James’s expense to highlight different levels of precision:

When to Use What Answer Do You Want?

The most obvious case is during and after exec meetings, especially more formal ones such as a Quarterly Business Review (QBR):

During the meeting, the situation can be a nuanced one to navigate. Easy-to-write, harder-to-do is an aligning response such as, “I’m happy to share my best answer here, but would you prefer the team and I dig in for a few days on something more deeply thought-out?” The path typically taken is the individual/team gets a curve ball question, and they answer off the cuff, at least half the time bumbling through a meandering answer rather than having the confidence to say, “I don’t know, let me get back to you.”

After the meeting, it can be easier to align, especially if there are several follow-ups. A team or project lead sends an email or doc outlining, “We’re following up on these 6 topics,” where it’s helpful to align on the level of effort the team will invest as follow-up. For example, of the 6 topics, outlining the team plans to go deep on items 1 and 3, go medium on 2 and 6, and go light on 4 and 5.

What Answer Do You Want also applies equally with emails and other written comms. Many of us have heard about former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his habit of forwarding customer complaints using the “Question Mark Method” - forwarding emails with only a “?” - where the expectation is teams treat these like a fire drill. In our opinion, that feels like overkill - every forward being a fire drill - but if that’s the expectation, at least it’s clear and consistent.

Finally, What Answer Do You Want doesn’t only apply to execs asking questions: it’s equally applicable with anybody more senior in a reporting hierarchy asking a question of their team and aligning on the level of rigour and precision expected. A first-level manager has the same responsibility of setting clear expectations as a trillion-dollar valuation CEO.

How do we use What Answer Do You Want?

James:

What Answer Do You Want was a big framework at Bain, which makes sense given our output was almost always in written form, usually in slides. Therefore, whether we as a team were partnering with our client or an individual team-member was partnering with their Case Team Leader/Manager, we spent a lot of time setting clear expectations on our deliverable.

There’s nothing magic about 2-minutes/hours/days vs 3- or 5- or even 8- (cue up 8-Minute-Abs from There’s Something About Mary), but for whatever reason, 2 is what I’ve always used. There’s also nothing magic about using time - I’ve seen teams align on, “we want A+ quality on item A, but a B- is fine on item B” - it all comes down to aligning on the level of rigour and effort desired.

Absent aligning upfront, teams tend to overwork because they default to any question requiring an A-quality answer ASAP. This default approach works great for anything truly important, so much of What Answer Do You Want is getting clear when precision is NOT important and a quicker, scrappier, less thorough answer is preferable.

John:

A rule of thumb I’ve been trying to use lately that’s closely related to this framework is Colin Powell’s 40/70 Rule. When making a quick decision, former Secretary of State Powell would aim to gather a minimum of 40% and a maximum of 70% of the information needed.

Powell would gather a minimum of 40% and a maximum of 70% of the information needed.

While these numbers may seem arbitrary, in most decisions, there’s a point at which information begins to form a pattern and a point when it confirms a pattern. It’s important to note these points and ask, “How likely is it that gathering more information will change our decision?”

As we blueprinted with Jeff Bezos’s 1-Way vs 2-Way Doors, with 1-Way Doors it might be worth gathering more information to gain greater confidence, but with 2-Way Doors our effort is best placed elsewhere.

James:

A sister framework to “What Answer Do You Want?” is time-boxing the amount of work we’ll spend on anything. Lawyers and anybody who bills by the hour are very good at this: they commit 4 hours to a given task - they time-box it at 4 hours - and then they’re done because they don’t think it warrants more than 4 hours of work. It’s the antidote to Parkinson’s Law, the idea that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. As a former consultant who can create slides at record speed, I’ll often create a deck the night before a low- or medium-priority meeting because I know if I start a week ahead of time, I’ll spend 10+ hours, whereas if I start the night before, it’ll take the 2-3 hours I have. 1 in 20 times, I start too late, and it’s a stressful experience with lower quality output or a later night than ideal, but not overinvesting time the other 19 times more than makes up for the occasional crappy evening.

Another related idea is being good at adjusting your answer to match a given situation. Newscasters are the world’s best at this, adjusting their content and delivery to fill the space to fill their time slot to the second. Similarly, execs being interviewed are experts at knowing when to give the same question a 20-30 second sound bite response (e.g., for a CNBC appearance) vs when to give it a 2-4 minute response (e.g., for a fireside chat at a conference). A recent example for me is telling my elementary-aged kids a story on the way to school - a 15-25 minute drive - and adjusting the plot as traffic pools or eases so the “good guys” beat the “bad guys” just as the kids get out of the car ;)

John:

The exact concept of What Answer Do You Want is a new framework for me. I look forward to using it with my Biz Ops partners, who have been inundated with my new-guy requests to answer all sorts of questions about our business as I ramp up. I’ll check back in the comments section with insights!

Want to learn more?

WANT TO GO DEEPER ON RELATED COMMS & DECISION-MAKING FRAMEWORKS?

We’ve Blueprinted several topics that connect to exec and team alignment:

Jeff Weiner’s 3 Levels of Feedback encourages execs to be clear on what type of feedback they’re giving: One Person’s Opinion, a Strong Recommendation, or a Mandate. It’s a similar concept to this one, only substituting offering feedback for posing a question. Key to both Blueprints is the recognition that teams tend to take exec input as marching orders, so it’s the exec’s responsibility to be clear on their expectations.
Jeff Bezos’s 1-Way vs 2-Way Doors is all about how easily reversible a decision is and, therefore, how much analysis and prep needs to go into making it. Applying this to What Answers Do You Want, shorter, less thought-out answers are more appropriate for more easily reversible decisions.
This Meeting Will Be Successful If shares a focus on setting clear expectations upfront: in this case it’s establishing clear goals for a meeting.

All three Blueprints share being clear upfront: they all remind us of LinkedIn Chief Product Officer Tomer Cohen and his memorable, “We may be wrong, but we won’t be confused”: