I thought we decided that

Imagine your agency is designing packaging for a new coffee brand. On Tuesday, the client’s marketing lead approves the front of the bag. Your designer starts adapting it for three more blends. On Friday, the client asks if you can make the roast level easier to spot. By the next review, someone is asking whether you can bring back the type from the first round. You’re about to open a file called approved to find out what’s still approved.

I understand the urge to pull up Tuesday’s email and point to the exact sentence where everyone agreed. You should pull it up. Just give yourself a minute to find out what Friday’s question means before you put Tuesday’s email into evidence.

Find out what changed

In this example, maybe the sales team just saw the bags on a mock shelf and realized they couldn’t tell the blends apart. That’s useful information, even if the timing is a pain. Maybe the sales lead was supposed to review the design before it went into production and nobody invited her. It’s also possible the marketing lead could approve the design direction but only the brand director could release it for production. Or maybe everyone agreed marketing could make the call, and “looks good, let’s go with this” meant “use this direction” to the client and “make three more of these” to the agency.

Those are four different conversations. The quickest way to figure out which one you’re in is to name what your team understood and ask a question that leaves room for an answer. “When we got the approval Tuesday, we started adapting the design for the other blends. What did you understand we were ready to start? And what came up when you saw the bags together?”

If the concern is that shoppers can’t spot the roast level, keep the discussion there for a minute. You may be able to solve it by changing the size or placement of a few words. Opening up the entire design because someone asked about the type is how you end up looking at four versions of a coffee bag when all anyone wanted was to find the dark roast.

Get the people who can answer the question

I’d bring in the sales lead who saw the bags on the shelf, the designer who can explain what a change would involve, and whoever can approve the packaging for production. If changing the print date requires a separate decision, find out who can make that one, too. You can get a lot done in twenty minutes when the people in the room can answer the questions you came to ask.

When approval authority is fuzzy, ask directly. “Who can give us the go-ahead to send these to the printer? I want to make sure they see the shelf mockup before we agree on a fix.” If the marketing lead has been relaying feedback from three people, give them a chance to help you get those people into the conversation. They may be just as tired of translating as you are of guessing.

Show what each option asks of the team

Ask the people doing the work what the change would actually take. In this example, the designer might be able to enlarge the roast label across all four bags by Wednesday. Bringing back the old type across the whole design could mean rebuilding each layout, getting another round of approvals, and giving up the print slot. Keeping the current artwork would protect the slot, with the shelf concern still unresolved. Now the person making the call can weigh something more concrete than whether the old type felt a little friendlier.

You might say, “We can make the roast label easier to read and still get the files to the printer Thursday if we have approval by noon Wednesday. If you want to revisit the type across the whole bag, we’ll need to move the print slot. How much of the design do we need to reopen to solve what sales saw?”

If you’re waiting for an answer, tell the team what to do in the meantime. The designer can keep checking the back-of-pack copy and hold the front layouts until Wednesday. If noon passes without a decision, say who will call the printer and when. Otherwise, someone is going to spend Wednesday afternoon making four lovely bags they may have to make again on Thursday.

Close the decision in words people can work from

At the end of the conversation, say the decision out loud while the people who made it can still correct you. “We’re making the roast label bigger across all four bags. Maya will approve the revised fronts by noon Wednesday so we can send the files Thursday. If the shelf check still shows a problem, we’ll review it with Maya before anything goes to print. Does that match what you heard?”

Put that recap next to the artwork or in the place your team goes to find decisions. Send it to the people who’ll act on it, including anyone whose review or deadline changed. If the same question comes back on the next round, ask which part of the agreement still feels open and who needs to resolve it. That’s a more useful conversation than another round of comments on the font.

If you’ve already got a decision in mind, bring it to A human-centered project check-in. Start with the moment the decision came back. Write down what you heard, what you assumed it meant, and whose perspective would help you decide what to do next. The ten-page workbook is a fillable PDF you can also print. It’s free when you join my Project Management for Humans newsletter. If you already subscribe, sign in to get it.

T L ; D R – When a decision comes back, ask what changed before you send everyone back to the drawing board. Get the person who can make the call in the room, then spell out what the team should do next.