Telling them what to do
Specifying the what without specifying the how, and what happens the moment you specify the how.
Reads as a businessReads as employmentCuts both waysDepends where you are
Four factors, and no total. Every bar is the same length: the side is the claim, the size is not. The heaviest factor in most tests, and the easiest one to give away by accident.
Can You Say How the Work Is Done?
You can say what the finished thing must be and by when; the moment you specify the method you hand over the factor nearly every test weighs most heavily.
The Brief That Stays a Brief
A brief states the result, its constraints and its context; written another way the same information becomes a method document, and the verbs are the giveaway.
Deadlines Are Not Shifts
A date by which something must exist is commercial specification; a requirement to be working at set times is scheduling, and most buyers blur the two unawares.
The Daily Check-In
Wanting to know how work is going is legitimate; the mechanism most businesses reach for is an employer's, and several others answer the same questions.
When They Ask You What to Do
A supplier who keeps asking you to make their decisions is handing you control of method, and the useful answers supply the inputs rather than the conclusion.
Rewriting the Brief Mid-Job
A change agreed and recorded keeps the specification governing the work; the same change issued as a direction quietly replaces the specification with you.
Tools, Systems and the Licence Question
Who supplies the equipment is a factor almost everywhere, and much modern work cannot be done without access to systems only the buyer controls.
The Instruction You Gave Without Noticing
Nobody decides to start directing a supplier; it arrives through individually sensible moments, each solving a real problem, and none recorded anywhere.