Shane Murphy at Dual Party Capital: What Question Is This Brief Answering?

A short brief can be beautifully written and still leave its reader unsure what to do. The problem may have little to do with grammar. A document can describe a business, introduce an opportunity and display impressive ambition without identifying the question it wants another person to answer. I would rather settle that question before polishing the introduction.

I am Shane Ian Murphy, cofounder and partner of Dual Party Capital, and this is my perspective on communication within the work we propose to develop. Consider a hypothetical prospective counterparty who sends a two-page summary. Before asking for a longer presentation, I would ask: which question is this brief meant to help us answer? That is an invitation to make the exchange more useful, rather than a test with a hidden correct response.

There are several possible answers. The sender may want to establish whether a conversation belongs within the recipient's interests. They may want feedback on how they have described a commercial problem. They may be seeking an introduction to someone with relevant experience. Each purpose calls for a different reading. A document written for one purpose can become confusing when the recipient silently assigns it another.

Suppose, in this invented example, the brief describes a proposed warehouse conversion. Its author might want a first discussion about the kinds of information a prospective participant would need. A reader might instead assume they are being asked to endorse the entire proposal. The resulting hesitation would tell us little about the underlying idea. It could simply reflect disagreement about what response the sender was requesting at this stage.

I would try writing the question as one ordinary sentence above the draft. Something like, “Does this description give you enough context to suggest who should join an initial exploratory conversation?” would create a useful editing rule. Background that supports that question stays. Detail that serves a different discussion can be moved elsewhere. The question need not appear in precisely that form in the finished document, but the author should be able to state it.

This exercise also reveals when a brief contains several separate requests. A sender may be asking for an assessment, an introduction and a confidential discussion simultaneously. Those requests should not be bundled so tightly that a recipient feels they must accept all three to respond at all. It is possible to say which response would be useful first and leave the other possibilities for a later exchange, without pretending that the broader ambition has disappeared.

There is a limit to simplification. Some questions genuinely require context, qualifications or specialist examination. Reducing a complex issue to an attractive yes-or-no sentence can conceal what the reader needs to understand. The aim is a legible request, not a forced binary choice. A good opening question might deliberately invite the recipient to identify missing context before forming any view on the wider subject.

I would also distinguish the sender's question from the reader's freedom to respond. Asking for a particular kind of feedback does not oblige someone to provide it, and a request for an exploratory conversation does not create agreement about anything discussed within it. Clear language should leave room for a recipient to say that another question needs answering first, or that they are not the appropriate person to answer this one.

For a hypothetical review exercise, I would give the brief to someone who had not helped prepare it and ask them to complete two sentences: “The author wants me to consider…” and “A useful response would be…” If their answers differ sharply from the author's intention, that is valuable evidence about the writing. Adding another paragraph of promotional language would be unlikely to resolve the mismatch.

The habit I want to encourage at Dual Party Capital is a modest one: identify the job of the communication before increasing its volume. A precise question helps a sender choose relevant material and helps a reader judge how to engage. It gives both people a more honest starting point. A brief earns its brevity when the reader understands why it has arrived.