Planning business content? Start with discovery
Earnsy Liu | September 29, 2025
If you’re planning to write business content or planning a new project, make sure you’re clear at the start about what it involves. Clarity is especially important if it’s a larger piece of content like a long report, a consultation paper, a website, or a strategic plan. Sometimes people only have a rough idea of where they want to go and trust that they’ll figure out the rest along the way. That’s not a good idea.
Be clear about your idea
Have you seen those images of a swing? The ones showing how the customer explained it, how the analyst designed it, what operations installed — and all the customer needed was a good old tyre on a rope. What happened? Who knows? Perhaps the customer didn’t really know what they wanted, or the consultant didn’t understand, or something else.
You can read tips and watch videos, but how the advice relates to your situation isn’t always clear. You can ask AI for advice — but you can only tell it so much, and it can’t pick up on important non-verbal cues.
Plan early to save time, money, and energy
Doing discovery early is a bit like cutting out the detour and taking the direct road instead. That’s efficiency. Discovery is the first step of your project planning, and is what it says on the tin: discovering.
Discovery is finding out what’s needed and the scope of your task, to answer some important questions.
- Purpose — what do you want to achieve? Why?
- Realistic goals — what do you want to do? How long have you got and how much time have you allowed for the different steps?
- Audience — who do you want to reach?
- Steps — what order should you do things in?
- Timing and budget — what’s possible for your situation?
You might be surprised that discovery makes a difference, even on a seemingly straightforward job like a report. Without good discovery, people sometimes make decisions too early or unknowingly jump ahead, using up more time and expense if they have to backtrack. Or they might be too optimistic with timing, leading to a rushed job and stress all round, or deadlines that have to be pushed out. We know because we’ve seen it.
Discovery can mean different things
What project planning and discovery mean will depend on the task. For example, it could involve any or all of the following.
- Asking probing questions or interviewing staff to identify what needs to happen
- Reviewing documents to take stock of where things are at
- Identifying the steps involved
- Estimating the time and resources needed
- Working on the first steps to see if things go as planned
Ideally, you’d bring in external expertise. You’ll get fresh eyes and someone who’s neutral, not afraid to ask ‘dumb’ questions, and who has the right experience to help plan. They don’t have to do everything for you, but they can guide you and advise what’s doable.
If you prefer to do the discovery yourself, perhaps with the help of AI, think critically and make sure your prompts help you get the most from AI. Human oversight is key.
How to use critical thinking for better decisions
Master ‘prompt engineering’ to get the most from AI
Start right
Get in touch. We can help with discovery and project planning, or with critical thinking and effective AI prompts.