Everyone writes the brief now

Giving instructions used to be a job for a few people. A foreman, a director, a head of household with staff. Most people spent their days receiving them.

That has quietly changed. Order dinner in Dubai and there is a box for a note to the driver. Book a cleaner and there is a box for what matters most. Hire a designer online and the whole job begins with a few lines you type. Even a search bar is a set of orders, and what you type decides what you get back.

Each of these boxes is a small brief. Most of us write them badly.

Building four, call me. Make it look modern. Clean everything. Short, vague, written in the three seconds before pressing the button. Then surprise when the driver circles the wrong tower, when the logo looks like everyone else's, when the one room that mattered got the least attention.

A few people write them well. Which entrance, which landmark, which floor. What modern means here, with two examples and one thing to avoid. Which room, and why. It takes a minute longer. The results are not slightly better. They are a different kind of result.

The gap between those two groups keeps widening, because the number of boxes keeps growing.

We are all, now, the person giving the instructions. What comes back can only be as good as what we sent.