Rory Sutherland: If there’s no answer, the question’s probably wrong

Until the late 1960s, the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson ran something called a ‘copy test’. It was a series of questions designed to uncover people with the kind of perverse imaginative talent necessary to work in their creative department.

One question, for instance, was ‘Describe, using no more than 50 words, a piece of toast to a Martian.’ Hundreds of people would write lyrical or technical descriptions in English. One person famously secured a job by writing ‘Floop, floop! Gribble ptáng chiz’nit greep floopiwop.’

Another question was the following: ‘Write, in as few words as possible, a notice for a country club to be placed at the entrance to the swimming baths, requesting that squash players shower before using the pool.’

Before you read on, just spend two minutes trying to answer this yourself. It would be easy to spend hours (as I did) agonising over this question without realising that the question itself is wrong. The ‘correct’ response to this question is not to answer it but to change it.

Instead of putting the notice at the entrance to the swimming pool, why not hang it at the exit to the squash courts? At the pool, the message would be displayed to a lot of nonsquash players to whom it is irrelevant. It will also be seen too late: by the time you have changed into your swimming shorts (or, if this is a French country club, your regulation Operation Yewtree skimpy trunks) it is unlikely that you will double back to the showers. At the exit to the squash courts, by contrast, three simple words will do: ‘Shower before swimming.’ Or you could draw a picture and use no words at all.

I often use this little example as a mental template for thinking about all kinds of things.